News

Honduras defies Obama-supported socialist dictator

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Background

The Honduran Constitution specifies that Presidents are only allowed to serve one-term. The current President Zeyala decided that things would be better if he were allowed to serve indefinitely. He tried to arrange a referendum to redo the Constitution so that he could serve a second term.

The Supreme Court declared that the Constitution does not allow the president to call a referendum, only the Congress can do that. So, they ordered the army to prevent the dictator from carrying out his plan to seize power anyway.

But Obama loves communist dictators. He would not side with the Iranian people against their Islamo-fascist dictator, and he will not side with the Honduran people against their communist dictator. It makes you wonder what Obama has against Constitutions, liberty, free market capitalism and limits on power, doesn’t it?

The latest

Obama’s UN representative introduced a resolution in the United Nations, along with other Marxist dictatorships in Venezuela and Bolivia, to support the Marxist dictator of Honduras.

The Hill reports: (H/T Gateway Pundit)

The U.S. co-sponsored a successful U.N. resolution supporting Honduras’s ousted leader Tuesday as Republicans began to speak out against the Obama administration’s condemnation of the overthrow.

Manuel Zelaya, who was arrested and forced into exile Sunday, addressed the U.N. General Assembly after the unanimous vote on the resolution sponsored in part by Bolivia, Mexico, Venezuela and the United States.

“The resolution that the United Nations has just adopted unanimously … expresses the indignation of the people of Honduras and the people worldwide,” said Zelaya, who began his speech by thanking Venezuela and Ecuador.

Obama even wants to speak with the exiled dictator:

…”I believe, if he — if he does come either today or tomorrow, that he will likely meet with officials from the State Department, some of whom, as I said, have been in contact,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in Tuesday’s briefing, repeating this when pressed by a reporter about whether Zelaya would meet with Obama.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has urged Zelaya to try to speak with Obama while in D.C., saying the American president’s support would “deliver a major blow” to Honduras’s interim government.

But the Republicans in Congress are siding with the Honduran people, and against socialist dictators:

“Manuel Zelaya trampled the Honduran Constitution by pushing for his illegal referendum to allow him to rule indefinitely, and by firing the top military official, General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, when he refused to comply with Zelaya’s unconstitutional orders,” Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) said in a statement to The Hill on Tuesday.

“There is little doubt that Zelaya, in his blatant power grab, has moved Honduras down a dangerous path toward less freedom, less security, and less prosperity. He consistently ignored the checks and balances which are essential to a democratic government.”

The referendum had been judged illegal by Honduras’s highest court and was opposed widely through political and military circles, including within Zelaya’s own party.

The Wall Street Journal reports: (H/T Gateway Pundit)

Hondurans are understandably afraid that, backed by Chávez agents and money, it could lead to similar antidemocratic subversion there. In Tegucigalpa yesterday, thousands demonstrated against Mr. Zelaya, and new deputy foreign minister Marta Lorena Casco told the crowd that “Chávez consumed Venezuela, then Bolivia, after that Ecuador and Nicaragua, but in Honduras that didn’t happen.”

It’s no accident that Mr. Chávez is now leading the charge to have Mr. Zelaya reinstated, and on Monday the Honduran traveled to a leftwing summit in Managua in one of Mr. Chávez’s planes. The U.N. and Organization of American States are also threatening the tiny nation with ostracism and other punishment if it doesn’t readmit him.

…As for the Obama Administration, it seems eager to “meddle” in Honduras in a way Mr. Obama claimed was counterproductive in Iran. Yet the stolen election in Iran was a far clearer subversion of democracy than the coup in Honduras. As a candidate, Mr. Obama often scored George W. Bush’s foreign policy by saying democracy requires more than an election — a free press, for example, civil society and the rule of law rather than rule by the mob. It’s a point worth recalling before Mr. Obama hands a political victory to the forces of chavismo in Latin America.

Meanwhile, the Honduran people marched in the streets against Obama and his communist dictator buddies, reports Gateway Pundit.

Hondurans protest against the unilateral meddling in their national affairs by Cowboy Socialist Obama
Hondurans protest against the unilateral meddling in their national affairs by Cowboy Socialist Barack Obama

Imagine what conservative Christian Republicans like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush would have done in a similar situation. They would have defended the rights and liberties of the people from the arbitrary power of socialist dictators. But they understood the value of liberty, democracy and human rights. They were prepared to take stands against the tyrannies of communism and fascism. They did not want to be loved by evil tyrants.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey at Hot Air notes that even the socialists at the New Republic are condemning Obama for neglecting the Honduran Constitution and the will of the people. (H/T Stop the ACLU)

News

Democrats use TARP money to shore up personal fortunes

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Story from the Washington Post. Senator Daniel Inouye (DEMOCRAT) intercedes to have TARP funds redirected to the floundering “Central Pacific” bank, which he owns.

But I prefer Hot Air’s summary.

In other words, Inouye interceded to get TARP funds to secure his personal assets.  He used his political clout on Capitol Hill to get Treasury to approve a “marginal” application that had already been rejected once, in order to save his own bank from collapse.  Central Pacific had already been in trouble with the FDIC even before the collapse in the lending and financial sector, thanks to bad management practices and undercapitalization.  The FDIC had required a change in management and $40 million more in capitalization, which is why Treasury was reluctant to give CP a bailout check in the first place.

Inouye isn’t the first member of Congress to have used TARP to rescue personal fortunes.  Maxine Waters did the same thing with OneUnited of Massachusetts, where she and her husband had significant investments.  In that case, Waters arranged a meeting between OneUnited and regulators, while Barney Frank wrote legislation that required Treasury to grant special consideration to OneUnited’s TARP application.

A second Hot Air piece about the corruption in the cap-and-trade bill.

Remember that last-minute, 300-page amendment to the cap-and-trade bill that hit the House just hours before the vote approving it?  The one that Democrats insisted on putting up for a vote before anyone had the chance to read it?  When one reads the contents of it, as the Washington Times’ Edward Felker did, it becomes apparent why Henry Waxman and Edward Markey pushed it through so quickly.  It was a payoff for Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) to turn her back on coal-producing Ohio and vote to kill the economy in her state, and she wasn’t alone…

…The amendment itself got published in the wee hours of Friday morning.  By the time the House came to order and began debate, it hadn’t yet been noted by the media.

In essence, Waxman and Markey bought Kaptur with our money. They spent $3.5 billion for a single vote in Congress, and Kaptur had willingly put herself up for sale.  Never mind that Ohio will get [hit] hard by caps on the use of coal.  Ohioans will lose jobs, their energy bills will skyrocket, and that will have an inflationary effect on all goods and services as the jobless rate escalates.

More Democrat corruption in Michigan

But this is not the only corruption going on with those sneaky Democrats.

Michigan Democrats are involved in yet another corruption scandal. I wonder if these Democrats keep their piles of cash in freezers like the Louisiana Democrats do.

Here’s the story from the BlogProf. This blog has been tracking the story from its inception.

Excerpt:

Ever since Monica Conyers became a convicted felon, a big chunk of the the most powerful Michigan Democrats have been somehow connected to the growing scandal. Husband John Conyers somehow wrote a letter to the EPA to open toxic deep wells that he vehemently opposed, which was a boost to Jim Pappas who was bribing Monica for the favor. In the middle was Monica Conyers advisor Sam Riddle. In addition, Pappas hired U.S. Sen Debbie Stabenow’s husband, Tom Athens, to illegally lobby for the same deal, all the while Stabenow publicly came out against Canadian trash imports, including those that we to be injected into said wells.

Since the conviction of Monica, Riddle has been talking. What he said today raised many eyebrows throughout the state, now ensnaring the Michigan Democrat Party, Jennifer Granholm, Mark Brewer chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, and Bernard Kilpatrick father of disgraced felon ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. From The Detroit News: Riddle: FBI probed $50K deal with Dems.

People who trash the free exercise of religion, traditional morality, the rule of law and family should not be expected to act honestly. Morality requires certain metaphysical beliefs, which Democrats, being secular socialists, just don’t have grounded by their worldview.

We can’t elect people who believe that it’s OK to kill defenseless unborn children for convenience and then expect them to have integrity. It’s not rational for someone like that to act morally. If they are willing break the big moral laws, they’ll have no trouble breaking the small ones, too.

News

Does the Bible condone slavery?

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Matt and Madeleine Flanagan have a wonderful post up to answer this thorny question. These guys are professional apologists, not amateurs, like me! They have footnotes in their post!

Your strategy

If someone asks you a question like this, there are two responses you need to make:

  1. Explain why the Bible does not condone slavery
  2. Ask the challenger why slavery is wrong, on their worldview

Let’s start with number 1.

Does the Bible condone slavery?

MandM’s response is based on the writings of John Locke in his “Second Treatise on Civil Government”. Locke based his argument on a reading of Exodus 21, where the rules of “slavery” are defined.Locke’s argument is that the definition of slavery in the Bible is not the same as the slavery of modern times.

MandM quotes Locke’s argument. Then they summarize it:

[1] If a person is a slave then that person is “under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away his life, when he pleases.”
[2] The institution referred to in scripture that people could sell themselves into, was not one where they were “under an absolute, arbitrary, despotical power.”

Then they explain some reasons why the indentured servitude in the Bible is not the same as slavery in the last few hundred years.

  • there was no kidnapping of an indentured servant, they served voluntarily in order to get rid of a debt
  • there was no racial component to indentured servitude
  • killing an indentured servant was a capital offense, striking one was illegal
  • indentured servitude was for 6 years, not for a lifetime
  • if the indentured servant fled from an abusive master, it was illegal to return teh servant to his master

References are provided for each of these points.

So the Biblical concept of “slavery” wasn’t what we mean as slavery when we look at British, Arab, or American slavery in history. Instead, the Bible is talking about indentured servitude.

What’s wrong with slavery, on atheism?

I think a more fundamental question that needs to be pressed on the atheist is whether slavery is wrong on their worldview. I’ve argued elsewhere that worldviews like atheism do not support the minimal requirements for rational morality.

Specifically, atheism does not ground:

1) Objective moral values: where is the standard?
2) Objective moral duties: to whom are moral duties owed?
3) Moral accountability: will I get caught if I am immoral?
4) Free will: are humans capable of free choice?
5) Ultimate significance: does it matter ultimately?

NEVER let atheists get away with making any moral statements, because even though an individual atheist might get lucky and act morally based on the objective moral law that God actually made, their actions are not rationally grounded by their worldview. Call them out!

This actually came out in the comments for MandM’s post, where John W. Loftus, a prominent lay-atheist, chimed in.

Here is a sample comment:

Rob says: (from Manawatu Christian Apologetics)

I presume John Loftus is a born-again atheist? If this is so, then upon what grounds would he criticize slavery at all?

If atheism is true truth, then I fail to see any possible ground that could provide a basis for outrage against moral evil, since moral evil cannot exist.

Indeed, if the universe is material only, then at what time did atoms create morality?

So John Loftus has to assume a Biblical morality to attack Biblical morality, but he would then be rejecting the basis for his indignation at slavery in the South, or any other slavery for that matter. He cannot logically have his cake and eat it too.

I can’t recommend this post and the comments enough. This is a great post and the comments are totally awesome, although you may find them difficult to understand. You will learn a lot from this post and exchange.

I am really impressed with MandM’s blog. Please pay them a visit and have a look yourself.

Related questions

You may be interested in similar challenges made by atheists that I answered in previous posts.

More questions here.