Honduras Situation
I do have some interest in Honduras. I donated several hundred dollars to their ecosystem when friends of my older brother flipped the Jeep they were driving in a river in Honduras and didn’t bother to go after the borrowed equipment. I didn’t even get a T-shirt, just a terse statement of fact.
CNN has an updated story. Heavy military presence in Honduras after coup, but hard news is not easy to come by because the major sources are aligned with various centers of power, so they are all lying to one degree or another.
This is what I have been able to glean:
- The government in Honduras has a very similar structure to the US government, i.e. three branches, checks and balance, constitution, representative democracy, etc.
- Zelaya was not simply trying to amend the constitution to give himself another term, he wanted to have a constitutional convention and rewrite the entire document.
- He won election by a very narrow margin in 2005 with a plurality of the vote, not a majority, and didn’t like working with the established government systems.
To those who think he was a liberal I would point out this from his BBC profile: “In May 2007, Mr Zelaya ordered all of the country’s TV and radio stations to carry government propaganda for two hours a day, accusing them of giving his government unfair coverage.” Not exactly an endorsement of a free press.
The Congress of Honduras has replaced him in accordance with the constitution, with the leader of Congress, Roberto Micheletti, who is from Zelaya’s party.
Consider the American system – who removes a President if that President ignores the will of Congress and rulings of the Supreme Court? What happens if Congress impeaches a President but the President refuses to leave.
As near as I can tell, Zelaya is the law-breaker, and the military was following the direction of the Supreme Court and the will of Congress. Having the military do it makes for bad press, but who else was equipped to do it?
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“Consider the American system – who removes a President if that President ignores the will of Congress and rulings of the Supreme Court? What happens if Congress impeaches a President but the President refuses to leave.”
We almost found out under Richard Nixon, but even Nixon was not so full-blown batshit crazy as to precipitate that crisis… close, but not quite. Toward the end of Cheney’s reign (word used advisedly), I feared we were once again about to find out, and I am still not confident the GOP will not make some sort of attempt when every other part of their sorry, dogforsaken effort at totalitarian rule fails.
The real question in my mind is what Obama will do… now, while he is popular enough to do damned nearly anything. I’m not placing any bets.
As to Central America, I’ve often voiced the opinion that it’s the heat that drives the political craziness. If that’s true, we should soon see a revolution in Houston, where it was 101°F today…
The thing was, that even under Nixon, with the notable except of Robert Bork, people knew he was wrong, and were easing him out. Fortunately before they got to Nixon his die-hard cadre had been stripped away so those that were left still believed in the rule of law.
I have located some information on the constitution of Honduras and will write up a post. Oddly enough, there is no mention of an impeachment provision. My Spanish isn’t good enough to but I may try an on-line translator to see if it’s there but just not mentioned in the synopsis. Update: There doesn’t seem to be a formal process for impeachment in the constitution.
You have been breaking records for at least a week, as have we. We are back in the heat advisory range. Fortunately I was able to swap out my Mother’s main air conditioner on Saturday before it got bad again. It held on for the worst of it, but finally gave up the ghost. I suspect it was a victim of low voltage because of the demand. The new one is designed to deal with that problem, as well as being more efficient and using a better refrigerant than her old model.
I think we are looking at displacing 1998 as the warmest year, at least locally, because that is the current record year I see.
Ouch. Makes the hurricane season seem like it’ll be a bad one. My brother over in New Iberia is suffering in the heat too, as well as dreading hurricane season if this one turns out to be as hot and heavy as the weather seems to be — last time there was a hurricane down there, they had 8 feet of water in their building. (Luckily the building is designed to be flooded — no drywall or anything on the first floor which is all unfinished warehouse, the finished offices are above — but they did lose a lot of inventory they couldn’t get out in time).
And it got up to 99 degrees here in Santa Clara, CA, on Sunday. WTF? Until 20 years ago they didn’t even bother building homes here with air conditioning because it *never* got that hot! I mean, we’re right on San Francisco Bay, a big vat of cold water. Something wonky going on with the weather, guys…
.-= ´s last blog ..Faggot-knockin’ is the new nigger-knockin’ =-.
I’ve seen your hiking posts, and had a hard time reconciling it with my time at the Defense Language Institute at Monterey. It was cool and wet there, pretty much year round. It was hot enough if you crossed the mountains to Salinas, but not along the coast.
Of course in San Diego the entire month of June was always night and morning low clouds and a high of 72°. It got warm at the end of August into September with the Santa Anas, but only for a day or so at a time.
You might have to actually jump into the Bay to cool off.
Jump into the Bay? I don’t have a death wish — there’s enough mercury in San Francisco Bay that my flippers would grow fins! Especially at the south end of the bay where I am, where all the mercury from the Almaden Mine tailings ended up.
But yeah, the weather is just plain f*cked up. “Global warming is a myth”, my fine-feathered ass…
– Badtux the Overheated Penguin
My big worry is the Gulf temperatures. If the Gulf goes warmer than normal, the hurricanes get more intense. So far it has been more humidity that actual temperature, but the temperatures are higher this year.
The Bay is no place to be, even if it were clean. That’s coooold water! There should be a way to use it for cooling buildings, until it heats up too.