“Tyrannosaurus Debt” ~ Schoolhouse Rock
The Lyrics:
TOUR GUIDE: To your left, folks, is the Washington Monument, to your right, the White House. And over there, just beyond the Capitol, is the National Debt!
TOURISTS: Oooo! Wow!
There’s something huge Red, white, and blue That’s grazing in D.C. It’s gobbling up the taxes That are paid by you and me It doesn’t seem to notice We really can’t afford The billions that it’s costing us To pay its room and board
It doesn’t roam But seems content To dwell on Capitol Hill As long as trucks keep pulling up With tons of green-back bills We’ve got to feed the big guy We really can’t forget It has an awesome appetite Tyrannosaurus Debt
TOUR GUIDE: The debt was born in 1790 when our new government took over 75 million the colonies spent in the Revolutionary War.
We’ve got to feed the monster So it doesn’t get upset It’s got an awesome appetite Tyrannosaurus Debt
TOUR GUIDE: Alexander Hamilton, our first Secretary of the Treasury (he’s on the 10, you know), wanted a federal debt to provide a reason to establish taxes to support our new nation.
The debt was young, they kept it small They didn’t know back then In 1812 another war would make it grow again By ‘66 the Civil War had cost the nation millions The government in Washington now had a debt of billions
TOUR GUIDE: The Civil War ran up a debt of almost three billion dollars that still wasn’t paid off by World War One.
We’re spending money we don’t have Or so it would appear The deficit is that amount we overspend each year Though congressmen and senators Make vows to cut its size Despite their honest efforts The debt just seems to rise
TOUR GUIDE: Now the debt’s over 4 trillion dollars and still growing…
A balanced budget would be great To spend within our means To stop the monster in its tracks Before we bust our seams It feeds on just the interest Its appetite is whet It never, ever stops to rest Tyrannosaurus Debt
TOUR GUIDE: And this is the U.S. Treasury. It sells Treasury Bonds, bills, and notes, and savings bonds to finance the debt. The U.S. government promises to pay the owner interest plus the value of each bond at a future date.
We’ve got to try to tame the debt And bring it down to size To let it grow unchecked like this Is certainly unwise The debt’s a monster problem That we really can’t ignore I guess we should be grateful That it’s not a carnivore We’ve got to keep on servicing Our trillion dollar pet It’s got a monster appetite Tyrannosaurus Debt
A fiscal misadventure With trillion dollar dentures Tyrannosaurus Debt
TOUR GUIDE: Feeding time is ALL the time.
Coup? Obama takes GM. Honduras? Rule of Law.
What if, on January 21, 2001 instead of accompanying Vice President-Elect Dick Cheney to the Inauguration, Vice President Al Gore had led a large, angry mob in a march on Florida’s State Capitol building in Tallahassee to hand out Presidential survey election ballots ruled illegal by the Supreme Court? What if either of our impeached Presidents, Andrew Johnson or Bill Clinton, had lost their respective removal trials in the U.S. Senate but refused to vacate the White House and relinquish power?
Would police action to remove either Gore, Johnson or Clinton from office, pursuant to orders of the Supreme Court and at the direction of the Attorney General, whether or not carried out by U.S. Marshals, Florida State Troopers, the FBI, Secret Service or the U.S. Army, immediately after which the person next in the line of succession under the Constitution assumes the office of Chief Executive, be considered a coup?
Merriam-Webster defines a coup d’etat as:
a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics ; especially : the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group
President of the United States, Barack Obama aka Leader of the Free World and famed non-meddler in the affairs of Iran, whose small group of ruling Mullahs came to power via a sudden, decisive exercise of political force that overthrew the existing government while violently seizing American hostages, has joined Marxist Dictator Hugo Chavez (Venezuela) and Communist Dictators Fidel Castro (Cuba) and Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua) in denouncing the removal of Honduran President Manual Zelaya as an “illegal coup”.
Is this the lowest day in the history of the United States’ presidency? Obama’s un-clenched hand remains extended to the freshly bloodied fists of Iran’s Ayatolla Khameini and President Ahmedinijad. I say freshly since well before the mullahs shot down unarmed innocents in the streets of Tehran of late, their hands have been encrusted for decades with the blood of Americans and others via terrorist attacks in Iraq, Lebanon, Israel and the Khobar Towers. Obama remains willing to “deal” with those murderers.
Yet, the recent events in Honduras have brought about Obama’s conversion to the Church of Meddlesomeness to the point of isolating a small, poor Democracy? What great injustice has drawn the stare of our President’s evil eye?
Let us look at the series of events our converted Meddler-in-Chief denounces as a “coup”, in light of its actual definition (Noah Webster, pictured above) and the Rule of Law:
Constitution limits Presidential terms
Mel Zelaya is, or was, the President of Honduras. He and Hugo Chaves were tight. So tight, it seems, that Zelaya wanted to emulate Hugo by changing the Honduran constitution to allow him to run for office until he durned well gets tired of it.
President plays no role in enactment of Constitutional Amendments
To change the constitution in Honduras you have to convene a constituent assembly. The president cannot do that. The Honduran congress must approve a national referendum calling for the constituent assembly to consider changes to the constitution. Zelaya didn’t like the part about the constitution requiring approval of the congress before a national referendum could be called. So … he decided to call one on his own.
President acts outside his Constitutional Authority
OK .. so here we have President Zelaya calling for a national referendum when he doesn’t have the power to do so. The next problem is obtaining ballots! Since the Honduran congress had not called for the referendum, as required by the constitution, the government certainly wasn’t going to print the ballots! After all, how smart would it be to print ballots for an illegal referendum? So … Zelaya had to get the ballots printed elsewhere. Here’s an idea! Get his pall Hugo Chavez to print them! Yes! That will work!
Supreme Court declares President’s actions unconstitutional
So Chaves prints Zelaya’s ballots and they’re shipped to Honduras. Enter the Honduran Supreme Court. The court considers Zelaya’s election in light of the requirements of the Honduran constitution, and rules the referendum illegal and unconstitutional. The court then issues an order to the Honduran military telling them not to do the logistical work associated with Zelaya’s phony referendum. Remember, now … all of this has one primary goal. To get rid of the term limits limiting Zelaya’s rule in Honduras.
President defies Court Order
After the supreme court’s decision, General Romeo Velasquez tells President Zelaya that he is subject to a proper order from the Supreme Court and will not be able to carry out Zelaya’s referendum. So … Zelaya fires him. The Supreme Court orders Zelaya to reinstate Velasquez, and Zelaya refuses to do so.
Military detains President as he leads an illegal mob intent on its own coup d’etat
At this point Zelaya’s ego is getting the better of him. If the military won’t run his illegal referendum, he’ll just do it himself. He gins up a mob and leads them to the military compound where Hugo’s ballots are stored and then has his supporters begin distributing the ballots to the masses.
President arrested for criminal acts but is mercifully allowed exile rather than prosecution
Based on the Supreme Court’s ruling the Honduran attorney general said that the proposed referendum was illegal and said that he would arrest anyone attempting to carry out the election. Zelaya was arrested by the military and was escorted out of the country.
Not a coup
Messy situation, but not a coup, given that the military never seized control of the government as the Speaker of the House assumed the Presidency on an interim basis pending the already scheduled November election.
Not a few suggest that it would have been better to have detained Zelaya in country and removed him via impeachment, but his actions were wreaking havoc on civil order. It should also be noted that all major institutions in the country, including his own political party, supported his removal from office.
Compare to Obama’s actions in the USA
Shall we return to the definition of coup d’etats as we analyze how Obama became CEO of Chrysler, General Motors and large segments if the banking industry?
TARP was passed by Congress in 2008 for the purpose of Protecting the financial industry by Relieving banks of Troubled Assets, hence the acronym.
To date, no bank has been relieved from the first troubled asset. Instead, hundreds of billions have been used to buy government ownership in banks, and to takeover GM and Chrysler, all with no constitutionally mandated just compensation paid to creditors or shareholders whose property interests were taken.
Rather, taxpayer money has been funneled thru under duress bankrupticies for political payoffs to labor unions with taxpayers on the hook for future products liability, debts and losses by the auto companies and banks.
In effect, a small group (Obama/Geithner/Bernanke) overthrew and/or altered existing corporate governance under the Rule of Law via the sudden and decisive force of the Executive Branch of the Government of the United States.
Would that President Obama would eschew constructive coups in the America; denounce them among the Axis of Evil; and quit imagining them where they haven’t occurred in Central America.
Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.
Dan Spencer reporting at RedState.com writes:
In his December 20, 2008 weekly address, President-elect Obama set forth some soaring rhetoric regarding science:
Because the truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources – it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient – especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States – and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work.
This video shows the time line of the story:
Suppressing Science in the Obama Administration
The EPA Suppresses a 98-page internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming Declan McCullagh reports:
Less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty “decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data.”
The EPA official, Al McGartland, said in an e-mail message (PDF) to a staff researcher on March 17: “The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward…and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision.”
The e-mail correspondence raises questions about political interference in what was supposed to be an independent review process inside a federal agency–and echoes criticisms of the EPA under the Bush administration, which was accused of suppressing a pro-climate change document.
Our friend Dan Spencer reports:
E-mail messages released this week show that Alan Carlin, the primary author of the 98-page EPA report, was ordered not to “have any direct communication” with anyone outside his small group at EPA on the topic of climate change, and was informed that his report would not be shared with the agency group working on the topic.
The suppressed Carlin report was especially inconvenient for Obama’s cap and trade push:
Carlin’s report listed a number of recent developments he said the EPA did not consider, including that global temperatures have declined for 11 years; that new research predicts Atlantic hurricanes will be unaffected; that there’s “little evidence” that Greenland is shedding ice at expected levels; and that solar radiation has the largest single effect on the earth’s temperature.
If there is a need for the government to lower planetary temperatures, Carlin believes, other mechanisms would be cheaper and more effective than regulation of carbon dioxide. One paper he wrote says managing sea level rise or reducing solar radiation reaching the earth would be more cost-effective alternatives.
Just another case in point that clearly shows Obama and his administration will do anything to advance his agenda up to and including lying to the American people and suppressing scientific data.
