In the form of an AFP report on Honduras – adjustments to make it a true story are in italics:

Honduras’s de facto government has shot down a last-gasp deal to resolve the country’s global left’s political crisis, insisting ousted President Manuel Zelaya cannot return to office.

The return of Mr Zelaya as president was impossible, interim foreign minister Carlos Lopez Contreras said on CNN’s Spanish station, effectively killing hopes of a settlement an outsider-enforced coup.

Crisis mediator and Costa Rican President Oscar Arias has proposed a fresh plan for Zelaya’s return Wednesday, with concessions for the interim government, which backed ordered the army’s June 28 expulsion of the Honduran leader.

Arias’s plan called for Zelaya’s return to the country as president in a national unity government, until his term ended in January.

In return, the current de facto leadership would see sanctions against the country lifted, a limited amnesty for political Zelaya’s crimes and a bar on Zelaya seeking constitutional reforms designed to let him seek another term in office.

But negotiators for the de facto government returned to Honduras saying the deal presented in Costa Rica would not be signed by their leader President Roberto Micheletti.

“As I see it, it will be difficult for him to sign up,” spokesman Mauricio Villeda said…

… Hondurans remain deeply split over opposed to the possibility of his return. Many fear it are certain would provoke more violence after Zelaya’s spectacular first attempt left at least one protester dead in clashes with soldiers.

On that occasion, troops had blocked the runway of the airport where he tried to land.

Hundreds Tens of thousands of white-clad demonstrators on Wednesday protested against Zelaya’s return in the capital, where the situation has become increasingly polarized clear that Zelaya is not wanted.

“We don’t like you, Mel,” one banner read in Wednesday’s demonstration, using Zelaya’s nickname.

Of course, they are also acting like fraidy-cats:

Democrats are preventing Republican House Members from sending their constituents a mailing that is critical of the majority’s health care reform plan, blocking the mailing by alleging that it is inaccurate.

House Republicans are crying foul and claiming that the Democrats are using their majority to prevent GOP Members from communicating with their constituents.

The dispute centers on a chart created by Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee to illustrate the organization of the Democratic health care plan.

At first glance, Brady’s chart resembles a board game: a colorful collection of shapes and images with a web of lines connecting them.

But a closer look at the image reveals a complicated menagerie of government offices and programs that Republicans say will be created if the leading Democratic health care plan becomes law.

In a memo sent Monday to Republicans on the House franking commission, Democrats argue that sending the chart to constituents as official mail would violate House rules because the information is misleading.

Democrats are scared to death that something other than pro-Obamacare propaganda will get out there. If they are so confident the GOP chart is bogus, then let us see their version of the chart, so that we can peruse it for accuracy.

This desperate desire to stifle debate on the part of our liberal fascists will be a large part of their undoing – “if ye be afraid to hear the worst, then let the worst unheralded fall on your head”. Democrats are heading for a fall, and it will come as a shock to them.

Last night, Barack Obama took a question regarding the incident at Harvard University involving black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., who was seen byneighbors trying to force his way into his home and then initially refused to provide to responding officers who arrived on the scene in response. My thoughts on Obama’s irresponsible comments are posted here.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: We can all be pretty certain the the professor was an Obama voter, but given that Cambridge gave 40,876 votes to Obama and 4,697 votes to McCain, it is very likely that everyone involved voted for Obama…this is just a very stupid move by Obama, mindlessly playing the race card from the bottom of the deck when even a cursory examination would show the chances of race playing a role here are nil.

Expect to hear that word, “experiment”, a lot more often:

With one word Monday, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele helped the GOP get back in the fight over health care and the entire Obama agenda. The word was “experiment.”

“Candidate Obama promised change,” Steele said in a speech at the National Press Club. “President Obama is conducting an experiment.” Steele went on to accuse Barack Obama of carrying out dangerous experiments with the nation’s health care, with the economy, with taxpayers’ dollars.

“Experiment” didn’t come from nowhere. “The term bubbled up from a set of focus groups we did with swing voters, independents, soft Republicans and soft Democrats,” says one strategist involved in an extensive RNC research effort nationwide and in key states like Virginia, Colorado and Florida. “It’s something that a vast majority of voters believe is true, that Obama is running what amounts to an experiment with our future.”

I’ve never seen so many people so incensed over a President’s plans – I’m getting calls out of the blue from friends who want to find out just what this man, Obama, is really up to. People are frightened that Obama plans to ram-rod through a series of changes where all the details will be worked out by him, behind closed doors, after the laws are in place…and we’ll then only have the Democrat-controlled Congress to call him on it (ha!).

Don’t think that the outrage over the mere thought of a 1,000+ page piece of legislation has died away…its simmering out there and eating away at the government’s credibility like acid. The closest analogy I’ve got to this is the way “global test” ensured that Kerry would never be elected President…in and of itself, it wasn’t that big a statement, but it ate away at his credibility relentlessly…so, too, are Obama’s actions eroding his credibility. If he doesn’t change course soon, he’ll be permanently down to “knee-jerk” Democrat support for the remainder of his term.

The final key to stopping Obama has been, of course, the GOP getting its act together. Steele’s statement is a good start, but its only a start and we still have a very large number of Beltway Barnacles in our party who really think that the people don’t matter – these people will try mighty hard to bail Obama out because, in the end, they prefer an elitist like Obama to the regular folks out there with their TEA Parties and unrealistic expectations of personal liberty, etc.

We can whack ’em, good people – the entire elite class, of all stripes. We can take our country back – in the end, Obama might be the best thing that happened to us. As was said in ages past, “the knowledge you are to be hanged in a fortnight concentrates the mind wonderfully”. Obama and the elites are building the gallows of American exceptionalism, and I think our minds are very concentrated, indeed.

Well, really, poem of the day:

The Convert

After one moment when I bowed my head

And the whole world turned over and came upright,

And I came out where the old road shone white,

I walked the ways and heard what all men said,

Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,

Being not unlovable but strange and light;

Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite

But softly, as men smile about the dead.

The sages have a hundred maps to give

That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,

They rattle reason out through many a sieve

That stores the sand and lets the gold

go free:

And all these things are less than dust to me

Because my name is Lazarus and I live. – G K Chesterton

Just in case any of you liberals were still rolling around in green shoots and chanting “Obama will fix it, Obama will fix it”:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said a potential wave of defaults in commercial real estate may present a “difficult” challenge for the economy, without committing to additional steps to aid the market.

Bernanke, testifying before the Senate Banking Committee today, urged lenders to modify “problem” mortgages to avert defaults. Christopher Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who chairs the panel, told Bernanke that “some have suggested” the commercial market “may even dwarf the residential mortgage problems” in the U.S.

The state of commercial real estate was one of the most- asked-about subjects in questioning by lawmakers so far in Bernanke’s two days of testimony on the economy. Bernanke said today in the Senate and yesterday at the House Financial Services Committee that it’s too early to tell how effective the Fed’s main initiative in the area will be.

The Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, a Fed emergency program that lends to investors to purchase securities backed by consumer and business loans, began accepting commercial mortgage-backed securities as collateral last month.

Fed policy makers will extend the TALF, currently scheduled to expire Dec. 31, should they judge financial markets are still “some distance from normal operation,” Bernanke said today.

Given the number of empty store fronts I see in my drives around Las Vegas, it would not surprise me if a wave of commercial defaults are on the horizon. The question is just how big it will be and whether this will be the death blow to our already over-strained financial system (its either this, or the “second wave” of home foreclosures, or China’s impending collapse – any or all, and there’s nothing, really, we can do stop any of them…though we can paper over the cracks for a short while).

We’re going to learn our lesson, good people, and we’re going to learn it good and hard.

UPDATE: Via Mish’s Global, Moody’s is grim on commercial real estate.

…seemingly, no matter what happens:

Just 31% of likely voters now believe the United States is heading in the right direction, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Down one point over the past week, it’s the lowest level found on the question since mid-February.

Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters say the country is moving down the wrong track…

Weren’t you liberals once upon a time really, really emphasizing this “right/wrong track” number? What have you to say, now?

Joel Kotkin over at The American notes the sorry failure of the “blue” model of governance and economics. I highly recommend reading the whole article.

As for me, I’ll note that the only way we can really get rich – really get out of our economic jam – is if we make, mine and grow things. Urban hipsters would certainly prefer that we make our money by talking to each other and shuffling money around…but, in the end, you have to dig things out of the ground, grow things and put things together for there to be wealth creation. In other words, you have to get dirty and be willing to put some sweat in to it (icky, sticky, stinky sweat! And, my goodness, all those piercings will be quite a hazard if you’re actually working for a living).

The blue economy is what died in late 2008 – the economy of usury, of mere technological innovation (as if we really need a new, improved cell phone or a new program that allows us to view porn a little faster), of money shuffling and living off the government dime. We’ll be stuck with “blue” economics as long as Obama is in office, but the good news is that the longer liberals stay in charge (to a certain point, of course) the easier it will be for us to install a new paradigm for economics and government.

I was preparing tomorrow’s lunch with the news on when the Obama press conference came on… I refuse to watch that pathological liar pretend to be a leader. Before I could even change the station he managed to blame Bush for the economy, then take credit for miraculously fixing it.

Screw that. Enough with the lies and bull s**t. I put on The Cosby Show instead.

Anyway, it got me thinking about things I’d rather do than watch that liar. Here are a few. Have any of your own you’d like to add?

Top Five Things I’d Rather Do Than Watch An Obama Press Conference

1. Wax my chest hair.
2. Spend a week at Gitmo.
3. Be waterboarded.
4. Give up coffee, wine, and red meat for a month.
5. Catch Swine Flu

Joining the growing list of States which have – finally! – discovered the 10th Amendment:

Gov. Sarah Palin has signed a joint resolution declaring Alaska’s sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution – and now 36 other states have introduced similar resolutions as part of a growing resistance to the federal government.

Just weeks before she plans to step down from her position as Alaska governor, Palin signed House Joint Resolution 27, sponsored by state Rep. Mike Kelly on July 10, according to a Tenth Amendment Center report. The resolution “claims sovereignty for the state under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States.”

Alaska’s House passed HJR 27 by a vote of 37-0, and the Senate passed it by a vote of 40-0.

Here’s the meat of the resolution:

BE IT RESOLVED that the Alaska State Legislature hereby claims sovereignty for the state under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States; and be it

FURTHER RESOLVED that this resolution serves as Notice and Demand to the federal government to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.

Music to my “small r” republican ears, that is. Time to get Uncle Sam back in to his cage – we need to strike a better balance…we’re not a mere collection of States, but we’re also not a centralized nation, either. We’re a mix, with the maximum power to effect day-to-day living left at the lowest level possible.

This sort of assertion of human liberty is, of course, anathema to our liberal friends – if we’re not a centralized regime, then things like Obamacare can’t happen…next we’ll be wanting to regulate things like abortion and pornography by purely local action, and where would that lead us? Eventually, some things might be different – and we’re not talking “different” in the sense of having a nose ring, but in the sense that people might live their lives as they choose.