DeMint And Sleazy K Street Whores Fail To Legitimize Honduran Junta

Rightists Doug Lamborn (R-CO), Peter Roskam (R-IL), Jim DeMint (R-SC), coup frontman Roberto Micheletti, & closet case Aaron Schock (R-IL)

One of my favorite reads of this year was Ken Silverstein's startling and entertaining book Turkmeniscam, a compelling exposé of how Big Money interests are able to buy their way into the heart of American power. "Washington lobbyists," he explains, "are not generally deemed to be a group with high ethical standards, and foreign lobbyists, with their track record of working for Nazis, drug-running despots and death squad dictators, are widely thought to be the lowest type of Beltway pond scum."

Widely, yes, but not widely enough to include extreme right wing politicians of a militaristic/anti-democratic bent like Jim DeMint of South Carolina, the fascist Cuban-American gangster brothers Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Connie Mack and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen also of Florida, each of whom has been working with Honduran militarists, plutocrats and sleazy K Street whores lobbyists to try to get the U.S. to recognize the overthrow of Honduras' legally elected working class-oriented government.

Extremist Republicans with their own foreign policy and trade agendas, primarily led by DeMint, have been cheering and encouraging the coup against President Zelaya. Am I saying DeMint should be put up against a wall with the other traitors and shot (after a trial, of course)? Would it matter what I say? In any case, despite all their plotting and connivance it looks like the K Street whores lobbyists have failed and a diplomatic solution is emerging for Honduras.

Lawmakers will wait until Tuesday to consider a U.S.-brokered agreement that could return deposed President Manuel Zelaya to power, despite diplomats' pleas to not delay an end to the country's four-month-old political crisis.

Monday is a holiday in Honduras, and many legislators are busy campaigning for Nov. 29 elections that will also elect a successor to Zelaya. If Congress approves the pact, it would win international recognition for the vote. Many countries have warned they would not accept it if the June coup is not undone.

Worst of the serial obstructionists-- across all issues-- in the Senate, DeMint has put a hold on Thomas Shannon's nomination as ambassador to Brazil and Arturo Valenzuela nomination for Shannon's current job as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. Even mainstream conservatives are aghast at DeMint's attempts to run his own foreign policy agenda at odds with the State Department. He has facilitated the brutal Honduran elite working with some of K Street's sleaziest and least reputable lobbyists, including even Lanny Davis, in an attempt to bribe and influence members of Congress to turn on the Obama's Administration's policies.

Overall, the effort by Honduran business groups and the interim government to earn U.S. backing for Zelaya’s ouster, saying the interim government leaders were in their constitutional rights to overturn the president, could end up costing more than $500,000, according to public records kept by the Justice Department and the Senate Office of Public Records.

Heavy hitters like Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Bill Clinton, and PR firm Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter & Associates were hired by those in opposition to Zelaya. Others in employ included lobbying firms Cormac Group and Vision Americas, where two former State Department officials from the Bush administration lobbied for a Honduran business association.

In turn, liberal think tanks that focus on U.S. policy toward Latin America kept pressure on the Obama administration to cut off aid and suspend visas for leaders of the de facto government. They celebrated the news Friday that Zelaya might return to power.

So let me ask you, is DeMint a traitor? In your opinion should be tried and executed as such?