Fahrenheit 3002

Via Josh Marshall, David Pogue NYT:

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

Honduras coup, Act II, day 4/update2

From TeleSur, the big event for today is a large protest scheduled for Tegucigalpa. I see on DK that AP has reported that Zelaya is en route to Honduras, but I question that. If he does show today, Al Giordano suggested some time ago he might arrive on the coast which is now not so easy to reach from Tegucigalpa because of citizen blockades of the highways. Supposedly the military in La Ceiba refused to join the coup. The next session of the talks is scheduled for Saturday, so my guess is that when those go nowhere, he will return that evening. Sunday being the Sabbath, it would be the best day for people to show up in support.

All speculation on a slow (so far) news day.

(image from Rights Action)

Update: Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega alleges that the Hondurans are planning to start a war by creating a border incident. They would dress up in Nicaraguan uniforms and attack a Honduran military facility. Somehow I think we’ve seen that movie somewhere before.

Machetera, who we first met back in the crooked 2006 Mexican election, is back and recommends Diana Barahona.

The Anti-Coup Front reports that in Danli, police are hunting down members of Unificación Democrática. The roads have been severed. Planes are overflying Catacamas and the home of President Zelaya has been occupied. (See here for English version; the news column differs, though)

Rights Action says that “two of [Marvin] Ponce’s fellow UD [Unificación Democrática] politicians have been murdered in murky circumstances: Roger Bados was killed over the weekend at his home in Rivera Hernández, a violent slum in the northern city of San Pedro Sula, while Ramón García was murdered while riding in a bus to the capital from the western city of Santa Bárbara.

Update 2: Eva Golinger makes a circumstantial case for US involvement in the coup (caution: annoying verbal ad). The most interesting part is this:

Just one month before the coup against President Zelaya occurred, a coalition of different organizations, business associations, political parties, high level members of the Catholic Church and private media outlets, was formed in opposition to Zelaya’s policies. The coalition was called the “Democratic Civil Union of Honduras.” It’s only objective was to oust President Zelaya from power in order to impede the future possibility of a constitutional convention to reform the constitution, which would allow the people a voice and a role in their political process.

The “Democratic Civil Union of Honduras” is composed of organizations including the National Anticorruption Council, the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduran Council of Private Enterprise (COHEP), Council of University Deans, Worker’s Federation of Honduras (CTH), National Convergence Forum, National Federation of Commerce and Industry of Honduras (FEDECAMARA), Association of Communication Media (AMC), the Group Peace & Democracy and the student group Generation for Change.

The majority of these organizations have been the beneficiaries of the more than $50 million annually disbursed by USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) for “democracy promotion” in Honduras

Nicholas Kozloff suggests that McCain is connected to all of the coup players.

Time For Them To Give A Little Back For A Change

As do most Americans who have been polled recently on this subject, Robert Reich endorses the tax-the-rich portion of the House health care bill, and here’s why:

According to the most recent data (for 2007), the best-off 1 percent of American households take home about 20 percent of total income — the highest percentage since 1928. Yes, I know: Critics will charge that these are the very people who invest, innovate, and hire, and thereby keep the economy going. So raising their taxes will burden the economy and thereby hurt everyone, including those who are supposed to be helped.

But there’s no reason to suppose that taking a tiny sliver of the incomes of the top 1 percent will reduce all that much of their ardor to invest, innovate, and hire in the future. Yet if this tiny sliver means affordable healthcare for a far larger number of Americans, who will be able to get regular checkups and thereby stay healthy and productive, the positive effect on the American economy is likely to be far greater.

Reich is correct in saying that the amounts mentioned in the House health care bill are a tiny sliver of the incomes of the top one-percenters. The top one-percenters have had more than the lion’s share of the proceeds of America’s economic growth over the past three-plus decades. This is borne out by graphs from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, which are shown at the top of this post.

C’mon, one-percenters. You’ve had over 99% of the bennies while most of us got bupkis — or actually fell behind. Cough up a chunk of it, or risk losing it all.

Friday Cat Blogging