Gateway Pundit has great coverage (that's just one post, scroll around) of the massive support for interim Honduran President Micheletti --and documentation of how our MSM only photographs the smaller groups in support of the deposed President-for-Life-To-Be.
As for the President's bizarre siding with the tyrant against a sovereign people and its constitution, well... perhaps this is related.
Meanwhile, allow me to get some other Obama-isms off my chest, all related to the topic of liberty:
Yesterday the President charmed the pants off the Catholic press by meeting with them for 41 minutes and assuring them his position on conscience protections was misunderstood (while simultaneously admitting they wouldn't like it).
I think that the only reason that my position may appear unclear is because it came in the wake of a last-minute, 11th-hour change in conscience clause provisions that were pushed forward by the previous administration that we chose to reverse,” said President Obama. “But my underlying position has always been consistent, which is I’m a believer in conscience clauses. I was a supporter of a robust conscience clause in Illinois for Catholic hospitals and health-care providers. I discussed with Cardinal George when he was here in the Oval Office, and I reiterated my support for an effective conscience clause in my speech at Notre Dame.”Allow me to translate. "President Bush watched the medical accrediting agencies encroaching on conscience protections and moved to reinforce them with a new regulation. Exactly as you fear and everyone who opposes the move has said, I am reversing that reinforcement and signaling to the accrediting agencies that they have carte blanche to refuse to certify pro-life doctors. Lest I be misunderstood, I am admitting this to you before your very ears.“I think there have been some who keep on anticipating the worst from us, and it’s not based on anything I’ve said or done, but is rather just a perception somehow that we have some hard-line agenda that we’re seeking to push,” he added.
“We will be coming out with ... more specific guidelines. But I can assure all of your readers that when this review is complete there will be a robust conscience clause in place. It may not meet the criteria of every possible critic of our approach, but it certainly will not be weaker than what existed before the changes were made.
Catholic press: He payed us lip-service! Swoon!
He also promised he would work to reduce the number of abortions. (Scroll around at ncregister.com for a host of posts on every topic that was covered.)
Meanwhile, in the real world, his administration is paying to abort brown people in the 2nd and 3rd worlds, wants to fund abortions in DC, and is trying to impose its own abortion policy on every nation in the world.
Catholic press: More lip-service! Swoon!
On gay rights:
I guess I would stand by my statement in Cairo that a position that dismisses religious belief and faith as intolerant without — in a knee-jerk fashion I think is — doesn’t understand the power and good that faith can serve in the world.”He acknowledged that there have been times “where religion has been used in the service of not such good stuff” and said that “it’s incumbent upon us to — at least in my own view — to engage in some deep reflection and entertain a willingness to question whether we are acting in a way that’s consistent with not just church teachings, but also what Jesus Christ Our Lord called on us to do: Treat others as we would treat ourselves. Be our brother’s keepers.”
Catholic press: He just called us bigots right to our faces! But he did it so politely! Swoon!
On another note: Not sure we should be angry with the President for not denouncing the Iranian election process; let him denounce the Minnesota election process first, being that it operated on similar principles.
The unfortunate lesson is that you don't need to win the vote on Election Day as long as your lawyers are creative enough to have enough new or disqualified ballots counted after the fact.On Cap-N-Trade, read the WSJ editorial, which rightly points out the thing is a 2000-page monument to bribery, with exceptions written for every company with a lobbyist --"the largest corporate welfare program ever."
And, since the President keeps telling us the stimulus is working, we are forced to conclude he wants us all unemployed. 9.5% unemployment. Where are the jobs asks Congressman Boehner?
Every day, in every way, we are becoming more like Venezuela.
It would be lovely to blame this all on corrupt politicians or "Big Corporate Whatever." Alas, it's us. Corrupt people elect corrupt politicians, for politicians rise from the people. Democracy, capitalism --their premise is morality, decency. Throw those over and their forms fail, which is what we are witnessing.
Michael Novak's been taking the Europeans and certain wizened Catholics to school on this this week (see here and here) in response to pre-reactions to the Holy Father's forthcoming encyclical (why can't people bear to read it first before opining?) And have you seen Robert Reilly's excellent article about this?
If there are not pre-existing, intelligible ends toward which man is ordered by nature, every individual must invent, in an arbitrary and subjective manner, some ends by which to guide his actions and order his life. The way one lives then becomes a matter of "lifestyle." The elevation of the word "lifestyle" to its present prominence is an indication of the total loss of any serious meaning in one’s choice of how to live. What used to be man’s most profound ethical concern has been reduced to an element of fashion.The way we live is our "pursuit of happiness" --blessedness, as the Founders understood it. If we refuse to strive to be good, we can't be free, either.
So, after all that ranting, I guess what I'm trying to say is: Be good! Have a happy Independence Day tomorrow.
