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Zelaya blocked from returning to Honduras

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 05 July 2009 11:41:00 PM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

The Honduran military blocked the plane from landing and they also shut down protests including killing one protester. The ousted president had flown to Honduras together with Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann of the UN.

Honduras was in turmoil last night as President Manuel Zelaya attempted to return and topple coup leaders who ousted him, prompting deadly clashes between his supporters and security forces.

The president flew from Washington towards home in a high-stakes effort to reclaim power, sparking dramatic scenes at the airport in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, where soldiers and police squared off against thousands of demonstrators.

After the interim government refused Zelaya permission to land and parked military vehicles on the runway, he was forced to divert the plane to the Nicaraguan capital, Managua, where it later landed.

Zelaya is now targeting another attempt either today or Tuesday.

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Americablog/~3/GH_LvvdMpBw/zelaya-blocked-from-ret
urning-to.html

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Open Thread

post from Crooks and Liars on 05 July 2009 11:30:02 PM. © Crooks and Liars

forever stamp_fa2c5.jpg

I got that letter from your attorney, Governor. See? I saved the stamp.

Open Thread below...

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http://crooksandliars.com/bluegal/open-thread-201

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Senator Schumer: "There Will Be a Public Option"

post from MyDD on 05 July 2009 11:18:19 PM. © MyDD

Today on CBS' Face the Nation, two senior Senators, one a Democrat and the other a Republican, on the Senate Finance Committee offered widely different assessments on how the final health care reform package would look. Not surprising, the object[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/mydd/~3/j2XSkx13WWI/9952

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Senator Schumer: "There Will Be a Public
Option"

post from MyDD on 05 July 2009 11:18:19 PM. © MyDD

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Sunday Late Night: Guvs Gone Wrong

post from Firedoglake on 05 July 2009 11:01:36 PM. © Firedoglake

Governors don't just resign without any reason. Sometimes governors resign to accept Cabinet positions, become Ambassadors or judges, or be sworn into other jobs they've been elected to. But governors who've left office without the reason of another[...]

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http://firedoglake.com/2009/07/05/sunday-late-night-guvs-gone-wrong/

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C&L's Late Nite Music Club with Green Day

post from Crooks and Liars on 05 July 2009 11:00:23 PM. © Crooks and Liars

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player! DOWNLOADS: (62)
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I've always wondered how Green Day would fare in a long concert. Their music is so relentlessly anthemic, I always wondered if they'd be able to sustain the electricity necessary for those kinds of songs -- especially for the audience.

So I caught their kickoff concert for its world tour last night at Key Arena in Seattle. And you know what? They somehow pull it off.

Now, Billie Joe Armstrong was quoted in the Seattle Times as vowing to put on five-hour shows on this tour, and last night was only three and a half hours, including the warmup act, The Bravery. But no one really cared, because it was probably the most sustained high-energy performance most of us have seen in years.

How did they manage to keep it electric? By connecting with the audience.

The band opened with a number of selections from 21st Century Breakdown, but quickly began sprinkling in hits from American Idiot (including "Holiday," which I managed to catch on rather grainy vid). If you were coming for the Green Day hits alone, you went away sated, because they were all there. ("Basket Case" in particular was awfully good.)

But Billie Joe made it work by working hard to connect to the audience. In this video, you can see him calling a 10-year-old up onstage to help with the dancing. At other times, he invited audience members up to sing, too, with varying degrees of success, but it was cool. And in what looked like it could have been a classic prearranged stunt, he even had one young audience member climb up onstage and play the rhythm guitar part for "Jesus of Suburbia." Rather well, I might add.

It might have been schtick, but it worked. The audience was electrified, and the music made it even more so. It was a great, great show. If the rest of the dates on the tour are up to this level of play, it should be a very good tour indeed.

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http://lnmc.crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/cls-late-nite-music-club-green-day-0

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RFK Jr -President Obama should go to Appalachia

post from Daily Kos on 05 July 2009 10:30:18 PM. © Daily Kos

Suppose a logging firm was tearing the cherry trees from around the Jefferson Memorial. Do you think anyone would notice? Suppose local trash haulers decided the National Mall would make an excellent land fill, construction firms decided to tear down the Washington Monument for building material, or a parking lot was planned for the site of the Vietnam Memorial.

Do you think President Obama might step outside before that tower of white marble was dragged down? Would he intervene before over 58,000 names were covered by asphalt? Would he object before the level of empty beer cans and disposable diapers spilled up the steps to Lincoln's feet?

Then why will he not stop the destruction of the Appalachian Mountains before they are gone forever?

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. points out, his father made the trip to West Virginia to see what was happening there. But these days, the plight of those in the mountains is all but ignored.

My father visited Appalachia in 1966 and was so horrified by strip mining -- then in its infancy -- that he made it a key priority of his political agenda. He complained that Appalachia, with our nation's richest natural resources, was home to America's poorest populations, its worst education system, and its highest illiteracy and unemployment rates. These statistics are even grimmer today as mining saps state wealth. In 1966, 46,000 West Virginia miners were collecting salaries and pensions and reinvesting in their communities. Mechanization has shrunk that number to fewer than 11,000. They extract more coal annually, but virtually all the profits leave the state for Wall Street.

Yes, there are many problems facing President Obama, and many issues confronting the Congress. But the issue of mountaintop removal may be unique in that it doesn't require any extraordinary action. It won't cost billions of dollars. It doesn't need any kind of false "bipartisanship." It only requires that President Obama instruct the EPA and other agencies to enforce the existing law. If he does not do this, there is no doubt where the fault for the resulting ruin will lie.

Instead of acting to enforce these laws, administration officials indicated last month that they will allow more than 100 permits to go forward while they carefully review their regulatory options. If they act accordingly, the ruined landscapes of Appalachia will be Obama's legacy.

It's no good to say that someone else started this disaster. The fact is that it's completely within President Obama's power to stop it. If he does not believe this issue requires prompt action, there's one way to prove it.

President Obama should go to Appalachia and see mountaintop removal.

Go and see, Mr. President. If you're going to allow this Appalachian Apocalypse to continue, have the courage to face it.

Look for additional discussion of this topic in Teacherken's Diary.

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http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/7tmchnfacoo/-RFK-JrPresident-Obama
-should-go-to-Appalachia

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Why 20 Congresspersons Knew FAA's Jim Peters Was
A Creepy Turkey-Vulture, Back In Spring 2008

http://aero-news.net/Community/DiscussTopic.cfm?TopicID=10426&Refresh=1
http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/02/25/faa-a-rogue-agency/
http://lautenberg.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=293870
http://www.natca.org/rss/ewr-whistleblower-071008.aspx
http://www.northjersey.com/news/transportation/No_Title_-_redesign1212.html
http://www.zimbio.com/Wolf+Blitzer/articles/19/FAA+Turkey+Vulture+Publicist+Jim+Peters
http://indictsturgell.blogspot.com/2009/04/faas-aptly-named-victoria-cox-lies.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2923819\
http://pages.prodigy.net/rockaway/newsletter470.htm
http://www.zimbio.com/Texas/articles/18/FAILED+BOBBY+STURGELL+FAA+THREATENS+30+000
http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/delcotimes/philh/2008/02/more-airport-turbulence.html
http://www.jetwhine.com/2008/02/atc-overtime-faa-controller-perspectives/

Read The Full Article:
http://ejectsturgell.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-20-congresspersons-knew-faas-jim.ht
ml

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Colin Powell: The GOP Still Has a Problem With
Racism

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Understatement of the year. The GOP still has a huge problem with racism and doesn't seem too terribly concerned about remedying it any time soon. Powell takes their racist cheerleader in chief Rush Limbaugh to task for his statements about Judge Sonia Sotomayor being a reverse racist.

KING: We are about to have a Supreme Court nomination confirmation hearing, and it is clear now from all involved that we're going to have a spirited conversation about affirmative action. It is an issue that you have discussed many times over the course of your life.
Any advice for the senators in both parties as this goes forward? Let me ask you first if you know Judge Sotomayor?
POWELL: No, I do not.
KING: She's from the Bronx.
(CROSSTALK)
POWELL: She's from my neighborhood, yes. She seems like a very gifted and accomplished woman. She certainly has an open and liberal bent of mind, but that's not disqualifying. But she seems to have a judicial record that seems to be balanced and tries to follow the law.
And so I hope we do have a spirited set of hearings. And Supreme Court confirmation hearings tend to always meet that standard. And she ought to be asked about everything from both the left and the right. What we can't continue to have is to have somebody like a Judge Sotomayor who is announced, and based on one simple tricky but nonetheless case at the Supreme Court has now decided, have her called a racist, a reverse-racist, and she ought to withdraw her nomination because we're mad at her.
Fortunately the senators who will sit on this hearing in the Judiciary Committee after a few days of this kind of nonsense said, let's slow down, let's examine her qualifications the way we're supposed to at a confirmation hearing.

KING: You wrote in your book some time ago about this issue, about serving in administrations. You wrote: "Never in the two years I worked with Ronald Reagan and George Bush did I detect the slightest trace of racial prejudice in their behavior. They led a party, however, whose principal message to black Americans seemed to be, lift yourself up by your bootstraps. Some did not have boots. I wish that Reagan and Bush had shown more sensitivity on this point."
Let's fast forward to where we are today. Does the Republican Party have that sensitivity now? You just mentioned the divergence of opinion when this nomination first came up. Are you confident those in, let's say, elected leadership positions have that sensitivity now?
POWELL: Well, if you look at the results of the election last fall and make a judgment on the basis of how the party did with respect to the Hispanic vote and the African-American vote, realizing that President Obama -- candidate Obama had a significant advantage with those constituencies, we haven't done well enough.
And when you have non-elected officials such as we have in our party who immediately shout racism or somebody who is quite prominent in the media says that the only basis upon which I could possibly have supported Obama was because he was black and I was black, even though I laid out my judgment on the candidates, then we still have a problem.
Now, affirmative action is an issue that I thought about and worried about for many, many years. But let me summarize it this way. If you have a public institution, say, a college, such as a college I went to, City College in New York, where you're responsible for educating the public, not just a part of the public but the public.
And as you are looking at your student population, if you find that there are some parts of the public who are not properly represented in your institution, shouldn't you do something about that? Don't you have an obligation to do something about it?
You don't have an obligation to bring in anybody who is not able to do the work. You should always have qualifications. But once you've established those qualifications, is there something wrong with a taxpayer-funded institution not making sure that it is representing the entire public, the entire population?
And I think that's a good rule for private institutions as well. Call it affirmative action, call it diversity. It goes under a lots of different names. I have a hunch that maybe 55 years ago somebody took a look at my rather mediocre high school grades, but at the same time, thought, maybe this kid can make it, and let me into the City College of New York.
KING: Worked out OK.
(LAUGHTER)
KING: The guy who used the term "reverse-racism," you didn't name him, but it's Rush Limbaugh. And he has said some not so favorable things about you, saying this guy says he's a Republican but then he supported Obama, so he's not really a Republican.
You're a Republican.
POWELL: Yes. And Mr. Limbaugh, of course, is entitled to his opinion but he's not on any membership committee. He doesn't decide who I am or what I am no more than I decide who he is or what he is.
So we've had this running debate, let's call it that. And he's entitled to his opinion and I'm entitled to mine.
KING: One of the questions people would ask when you say, I'm still a Republican, you've supported President Obama and you did make quite clear your reasons for doing so. Are you going to support him for reelection or is it too soon to answer that question?
POWELL: It's too soon to answer that question. And I get asked questions like that all of the time. I have voted Democratic over the years, I've voted Republican. I voted twice for Ronald Reagan, twice for the first Bush, and twice for the second Bush.
And I voted for Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson. I always try to find the person that I think is best qualified for the highest office in the land. I believe that our country is best served when there are two strong parties, strong parties that have opposing points of view -- political points of view. That's what makes this country great. And they can debate those points of view.
I think we run into dangerous territory in this country when the two ends of the political spectrum become so dug in and nasty and everything is ad hominem and driven by cable television and blogs and all kinds of other things that our positions get so hardened that we can't find a way toward the center, which is where the country is.