The Miami Herald reports on an interview with a Top Honduran military lawyer: We broke the law

In an interview with The Miami Herald and El Salvador’s elfaro.net, army attorney Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza acknowledged that top military brass made the call to forcibly remove Zelaya — and they circumvented laws when they did it.
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Inestroza described weeks of mounting pressure, in which a president who was viewed as allied with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez used soldiers as “political tools.” The attorney general’s office had ordered Zelaya’s arrest, and the Supreme Court, Inestroza said, ordered the armed forces to carry it out.

So when the powers of state united in demanding his ouster, the military put a pajama-clad Zelaya on a plane and sent him to Costa Rica. The rationale: Had Zelaya been jailed, throngs of loyal followers would have erupted into chaos and demanded his release with violence.

“What was more beneficial, remove this gentleman from Honduras or present him to prosecutors and have a mob assault and burn and destroy and for us to have to shoot?” he said. “If we had left him here, right now we would be burying a pile of people.”
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Lambert has a YouTube video of Loudon Wainwright III singing his song, The Krugman Blues, which is a fitting lead in to Krugman’s latest column, That ’30s Show.

The White House didn’t do enough to even slow the slide, much less start the recovery. Along with the job losses wages are heading toward deflation, so you have fewer people working, and those that are working are taking home less money. That is not the way you get out of a recession, much less the GOPression we are in.

The private sector is not even borrowing, much less spending or investing, so it is up to the government. The budget problems of the states are making matters much worse as they are required to lay people off and curtail their spending to balance their budgets.

We need a really big stimulus package and we need it now, or we are going to be stuck in this mess for a decade. The longer the White House stalls, the worse things will get. It is about time they stopped listening to “conventional wisdom” and started listening to people who have been right all along.

California has a Republican governor who can’t convince Republicans in the legislature to stop blocking the state budget, so the fiscal year starts with IOUs. I saw it under George Dukmejian and Pete Wilson when I lived in California, so why should it be different for Arnold. They all talked about fiscal responsibility and all ran deficits that they covered up. Well the days of cover-up are over, and something has to be done, but the Republicans in the legislature refuse to do it.

Digby lives in California and notes who gets IOUs, “People needing temporary assistance for basic family needs”, and who continues to get cash, “Legislators, legislative employees, and appointees”.

Since California loves initiatives, why don’t they put something on the ballot that says if there isn’t a state budget at the beginning of the fiscal year, not only do “Legislators, legislative employees, and appointees” not get paid, but they are fined an amount equivalent to their pay and benefits for every day until a budget is passed.

That is the penalty for public workers who go on strike in New York, and the “Legislators, legislative employees, and appointees” in California are public workers who aren’t doing their job. They obviously need an incentive.

Chilling Out

Turn down the thermostat!

[Editor: KT-2 attempting to remain lady-like while maximizing belly contact to cool off. It did cool off later when a thunderstorm passed through.]

Friday Ark