Ousted President Zelaya Leads Caravan Back To Honduras

July, 23, 2009 by nicedeb

honduran.guards.afp.gi

Honduran soldiers block the road at the Honduras-Nicaragua border in Paraiso, Honduras.

Honduran ex-President Zelaya, driving a sports utility vehicle, led a caravan of supporters and reporters, Thursday on a journey from Managua, Nicaragua, to the country’s border with Honduras. Their destination is the border city of Esteli, from where Zelaya will finalize the plans for his triumphant (he thinks) return.

Zelaya told reporters he hopes that border guards in Honduras will recognize him as president and commander in chief, and put down their weapons when he attempts to cross as early as Friday.

“We go with a white flag, with a flag of peace,” Zelaya said.

Micheletti’s government, which has vowed to arrest Zelaya on charges of violating the constitution, announced on Thursday a curfew in the border area with Nicaragua from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., the newspaper La Prensa reported. A less restrictive curfew remained in effect in other parts of the country, the paper said.

The backdrop to the tensions following Zelaya’s caravan is a peace agreement offered Wednesday by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who mediated two rounds of unsuccessful talks between the two sides.

The document, dubbed the San Jose Accord, calls for Zelaya’s return to power, the creation of a unity government, and early elections.

The accord was very similar to an original plan suggested by Arias, but with more details and a creation of a truth commission to investigate the events that led to the crisis. It also included a timeline for its implementation, which placed Zelaya back in Honduras by Friday.

Yet the entire Honduran government; The Congress, Supreme Court, and Attorney General was united in removing Zelaya from office, and do not want him back. On Wednesday tens of thousands, perhaps over one hundred thousand Hondurans took to the streets in the Capital to march in support of their government’s actions.

It was reported last weekend that computers owned by Zelaya were seized by Honduran authorities and were found to contain the official and certified results of the illegal constitutional referendum Zelaya wanted to conduct that never took place. Not surprisingly, the results of this fraudulent vote was tilted heavily in Zelaya’s favor, allowing him to illegally change the constitution so he could remain in power for as long as he wanted.

The question of why he was exiled instead of arrested is a legitimate one, but to insist that he be returned to power is simply unreasonable, and playing into the hands of the Chavez/Ortega/Castro Totalitarian Socialist block.

Not surprisingly, the United States and the OAS support for the San Jose Accord.

The man they want to see reinstated as President, the intrepid Jose Manuel Zelaya, told reporters that when he got to the border, he hoped the border guards would “recognize him as President”, and lay down their weapons. He will attempt to cross as early as Friday.

“We go with a white flag, with a flag of peace,” Zelaya said.

It may as well be a white flag of surrender because he will be arrested as soon as he tries it.

Previously:

Tens Of Thousands Of Pro-Government Hondurans March In Capital

Honduran “Coup-Mongers” Kick Venezuelan Diplomats Out Of Country (UPDATED)

US Turns Up Pressure On Honduran Interim Government To Restore Zelaya

Zelaya Vows To Return To Honduras; Asks Intl. Community For Help

Honduras Crisis Talks Resume In Costa Rica

Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Proposes Reinstating Zelaya

“Final Battle” In Honduras This Weekend?

Report: Sunday’s Violence In Honduras Orchestrated By Chavez

Obama Lies By Omission On Honduras

Clinton To Meet With Zelaya In Washington This Week

Honduran Military Removes Despot From Power

Obama “Stands With Democracy”, Defends Leftist Despot/Thug/Drug Trafficker

Honduran Military Ordered To Turn Back Zelaya’s jet

Video:Rep. McCotter: Where Are The Jobs?

July, 23, 2009 by nicedeb

Here’s McCotter, once again, telling it like it is:

Who’s sleeping Beauty?

MORE:

Other Republican House members also asked “Where are the jobs”.

UPDATE:

Okay, I should have known, Larry Summers is Sleeping Beauty:

(Photo by one wide-awake Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

The back story according to Swamp Politics:

When Obama met with executives from the credit card industry in the Roosevelt Room today, representatives of Visa, Mastercard, American Express and the credit card divisions at about a dozen of the largest banks invited in to talk about the president’s crackdown on credit card abuses, Summers faced yet another meeting.

The former president of Harvard has probably sat through some pretty eye-glazing lectures in his time, too.

So when reporters came in to hear the president talk about the credit-card problem after the meeting, Summers found his chance.

“He DID nod off, doing the head on the hand and then head falling off the hand thing,” the print press pooler reports. “All other officials in the room appeared fully awake.”

I can’t fault him for it. Obama does drone on and on.

Thanks to Jana who managed to stay awake for Snoozer #4…

Tens Of Thousands Of Pro-Government Hondurans March In Capital

July, 23, 2009 by nicedeb

Tens of thousands of Hondurans marched on the Capital, Wednesday to show their support for the government, and opposition to former President Zelaya:

PRO GOVERNMENT MARCH

Tens of thousands of Micheletti’s supporters rallied in the Honduran capital on Wednesday in one of the biggest demonstrations seen yet. Many chanted “Honduras!”, waved the country’s blue-and-white flag and wore white shirts printed with the slogan “I’m Defending My Constitution.”

They accused Zelaya of being a pawn of his ally, leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

“They wanted to impose communism on us, and we don’t want to be communists,” said retired gardener Florencio Mejia, 80, as he marched in a blue-and white baseball cap, clutching a Honduran flag.

Meanwhile, Honduras’ interim government on Wednesday, offered a compromise to the chief mediator in talks to end the political crisis:

The new proposal comes ahead of a midnight deadline for mediators to achieve the reinstatement of Zelaya, who is threatening to return to Honduras with or with an agreement and seek the prosecution of leaders of the coup that forced him into exile.

The interim government’s Foreign Minister, Carlos Lopez, said in a news conference that his government presented a working draft to Costa Rican President Oscar Arias on Tuesday that was drawn up with the help of a U.S. senator who “has followed the political situation in Honduras with great interest.” He declined to name the senator.

I’d love to know who that US Senator is…a Republican, I hope. Senator DeMint, perhaps?

Zelaya continues to indicate that he may not wait for a negotiated solution:

“I’m going to my country, my people, to reunite with my family, my wife and my children,” Zelaya told Honduras’ Radio Globo in an interview Wednesday from neighboring Nicaragua, where he has been staying at a Managua hotel.

Zelaya said he was gathering Hondurans and Honduran exiles in neighboring countries to participate in his return, and said that once he was reinstated as president, “a process of dialogue and reconciliation and forgiveness will begin, but there will be trial for those who carried out the coup.”

He’s dreaming.

MORE:

YAWWN…

Via al Jazeera:

The deposed president of Honduras has said that he will launch an attempt to return to his country after crisis talks with the de facto government failed.

Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted in a military-backed coup on June 28, made the announcement on Thursday from Managua, the capital of neighbouring Nicaragua.

But he did not say when he was planning to cross the border and enter Honduras, Sanchez said.

Mariana Sanchez, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Honduras, said: “Zelaya told me that he was leaving at 3pm local time towards the city of Esteli, which is north of Managua.

“Then he will go to Ocotal, which is 25km from the Nicaragua-Honduras border.”

As always, the interim government says Zelaya will be arrested if he crosses the border.

Previously:

Honduran “Coup-Mongers” Kick Venezuelan Diplomats Out Of Country (UPDATED)

US Turns Up Pressure On Honduran Interim Government To Restore Zelaya

Zelaya Vows To Return To Honduras; Asks Intl. Community For Help

Honduras Crisis Talks Resume In Costa Rica

Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Proposes Reinstating Zelaya

“Final Battle” In Honduras This Weekend?

Report: Sunday’s Violence In Honduras Orchestrated By Chavez

Obama Lies By Omission On Honduras

Clinton To Meet With Zelaya In Washington This Week

Honduran Military Removes Despot From Power

Obama “Stands With Democracy”, Defends Leftist Despot/Thug/Drug Trafficker

Honduran Military Ordered To Turn Back Zelaya’s jet

House GOP Target ACORN

July, 23, 2009 by nicedeb

ACORN, a supposedly non-partisan organization, are flagrantly misusing taxpayer dollars say Republicans in a new House Oversight Committee report.

The report, to be released Thursday afternoon, accuses ACORN of fraudulent activities and widespread corruption and calls for a criminal investigation into the advocacy group. It offers the first detailed account of the allegations that have dogged the organization in recent months.

ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform, has been under constant fire from conservatives since last year for its support of Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy and its planned participation in next year’s 2010 census.

The report will be released by Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Issa’s GOP colleagues.

The executive summary of the report says ACORN provided contributions of financial and personnel resources to indicted former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and candidate Obama, among others, in what the report calls a scheme to use taxpayer money to support a partisan political agenda, which would be a clear violation of numerous tax and election laws.

“Both structurally and operationally, ACORN hides behind a paper wall of nonprofit corporate protections to conceal a criminal conspiracy on the part of its directors, to launder federal money in order to pursue a partisan agenda and to manipulate the American electorate,” an executive summary of the report reads.

ACORN, which was sent a copy of the executive summary by FOXNews.com, dismissed the report as a “partisan attack job.”

In other words, “Shut up”.

How much longer can the MSM ignore this scandal?

Stop ACORN from Accessing Taxpayer Dollars

MN Rep., Michelle Bachmann started a petition, last month to stop ACORN from receiving federal funding, you can sign here.

RELATED:

You’ve got to be kidding me!

The American Spectator: ACLU, ACORN, Sue to Overturn Penn. Law Against Voter Fraud

ACORN canvassers are facing convictions for voter registration fraud in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, so what does ACORN do?

Sue to change the statute that outlaws the fraud, of course.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and ACORN’s get-out-the-dead-people-to-vote affiliate Project Vote filed a federal lawsuit today in an effort to snuff out the Keystone State’s anti-election fraud law.

According to the ACLU the law has been misapplied by Allegheny County’s Democratic District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr., who filed seven charges against former ACORN workers for falsifying voter registration forms. After preliminary hearings, all seven have been ordered to stand trial.

In a press release, the ACLU said the law has been misapplied “to prohibit an organization from using flexible productivity standards and goals to manage paid canvassers.”

Translation: efforts to crack down on election fraud are bad because, well, they crack down on election fraud.

MORE:

At Michelle Malkin:

Going on offense against the ACORN conspiracy

Hat tip: Jackstraw

Previously:

Video: Mark Levin On Hannity

July, 23, 2009 by nicedeb

Levin appeared on the Sean Hannity Show after Obama’s press conference to discuss ObamaCare. He called Obama’s performance “painful”, “incoherent”, with “lack of reality”: