I found this is a good summary of events from Gary's Choices:
On the basis of what we know so far, here is the sequence of events starting on the afternoon of election day, Friday, June 12.
*Near closing time of the polls, mobile text messaging was turned off nationwide
*Security forces poured out into the streets in large numbers
*The Ministry of Interior (election headquarters) was surrounded by concrete barriers and armed men
*National television began broadcasting pre-recorded messages calling for everyone to unite behind the winner
*The Mousavi campaign was informed officially that they had won the election, which perhaps served to temporarily lull them into complacency
*But then the Ministry of Interior announced a landslide victory for Ahmadinejad
*Unlike previous elections, there was no breakdown of the vote by province, which would have provided a way of judging its credibility
*The voting patterns announced by the government were identical in all parts of the country, an impossibility (also see the comments of Juan Cole at the title link)
*Less than 24 hours later, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene`i publicly announced his congratulations to the winner, apparently confirming that the process was complete and irrevocable, contrary to constitutional requirements
*Shortly thereafter, all mobile phones, Facebook, and other social networks were blocked, as well as major foreign news sources.
All of this had the appearance of a well orchestrated strike intended to take its opponents by surprise – the classic definition of a coup. Curiously, this was not a coup of an outside group against the ruling elite; it was a coup of the ruling elite against its own people.
Amazing pictures here.
Michael Totten has updates and video here.
Update: I stayed up until 3am last night reading the tweets on twitter from Iran. It was just fascinating to me that while the Iranian government was trying to block the people from Iran from letting the world know what was happening by trying to shut down all social networking, the people were still managing to tweet and post video on Youtube.
There we were, so many Americans from all over the United States, talking back and forth with people from Iran, while all these things were happening as it was happening. We read their cries, their updates on what was happening, and their heartfelt concerns. It was such a strong example of people over power that I couldn't go to sleep.
It's only a matter of time, in my opinion, before the youth of Iran (which are many) will rise up against the tyranny they live under, and forge a true Democracy. My only fear is that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will throw their country into war first.
Update: HuffingtonPost has much more with video here.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
What Happened in Iran Yesterday
Friday, June 12, 2009
"How Fox News Opened America"
The following is excerpted from Charles Krauthammer's remarks upon receiving the 2009 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism, named for The Post's late edit orial-page editor, yesterday in Washington.
....there should be a special award for Fox News. Fox has done a great service to the American polity -- single-handedly breaking up the intellectual and ideological monopoly that for decades exerted hegemony (to use a favorite lefty cliché) over the broadcast media.
I said some years ago that the genius of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes was to have discovered a niche market in American broadcasting -- half the American people. The reason Fox News has thrived and grown is because it offers a vibrant and honest alternative to those who could not abide yet another day of the news delivered to them beneath layer after layer of often undisguised liberalism.
...................................
That's why Fox News is so resented. It altered the intellectual and ideological landscape of America. It gave not only voice but also legitimacy to a worldview that had been utterly excluded from the mainstream media.
I'm proud to be part of this televised apostasy. And particularly proud to be part of the single best news program on American television, the six-o'clock news -- first with Brit Hume, now with Bret Baier. How good is "Special Report"? So good that even if I weren't on it, my mother would watch it -- and she spent 50 years as a Democrat.
My favorite part of this is his referral to the "niche market"in America, which is HALF of America. That's what puzzles the mainstream media. They don't understand Fox New's success because they never understood half of America.
It's that simple.
Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin, we as a country need you, but we don't deserve you.
Because of your conservative values and principles and the fact that you bring 10's of thousands of people out whenever you speak, the left is deathly afraid of you. You are number one on their hit list. Letterman is just the tip of the iceberg. They will not stop until they have made a joke out of you.
Any one of us would have quit long ago. We would have said that it isn't worth it. But you are standing strong. You are an incredible amazing woman.
Think about this. Has there ever been a time when comics or the left or the media made fun of a former candidate's children? Ever? No. Al Gore's son gets arrested for going 110 miles an hour with an assortment of drugs in the car, and we never hear a joke or peep about it from the comics. Joe Biden's 20 something year old daughter gets arrested for obstructing a police officer, and once in college she was arrested for possession of marijuana, and there is no joke there? The press and comics could not let go of the Bush twins partying because they ordered a margarita once while in college, when they were not yet 21, but while Clinton was President Chelsea Clinton partied and was photographed stone cold drunk passed out, and only the British press published stories and pictures. I don't remember one joke about Chelsea partying, and as you can see, see clearly did.
It is clear that the media, the left, and Hollywood will do whatever it takes to demean the politicians they hate. With Palin they lied about her banning books in the library in Alaska and they lied about her believing in creationism. They lied about her being a member of the Alaska Independence party and they lied about her cutting funding for Special Needs. And if you think those things were only said by the Internet rumor mill, think again. I personally saw Brian Williams of NBC news say these things one night the NBC nightly news.
What the left learned with Bush is that if you just keep saying the lie, and the comics keep telling jokes about the lie, and movies and documentaries are made about the lie, eventually the general population will accept it.
If anyone can take them on, it's Sarah Palin.
Pres. Bush endured years of movies, documentaries, comics, jokes, and commentators whose sole purpose it was to demean, degrade, and discredit our President, including his daughters. Pres. Bush never responded. That was his way.
But it's not Sarah Palin's way and I'm glad. It's time we stood up against this leftwing hate machine.
It's way past time.
By all measure, Sarah Palin has been an incredible Governor. Just recently she helped forge a deal between two rivals, TransCanada and Exxon Mobil, after a long-running battle over the construction of an Alaskan natural gas pipeline. They have agreed to work together. Her long list of accomplishments can be found here. But it's the little things that tell me who she is. When she became Governor, she let go of the Chef, because she said she could make the meals for her family. Can anyone see, say Pelosi or Hillary, doing such a thing? Of course not. She hunts and fishes. She has never had a nanny. She's owned a business. She runs marathons. She goes to Church. She is one of us in a way no other politician has been.
She believes in true liberty and freedom. She sees the danger of an overreaching government. She's a Christian, pro-life, pro-family values, pro-gun ownership, and she is woman. This is why the left hates her. This is why they are trying to destroy her.
I'll say it again, Sarah Palin, this country needs you, but we don't deserve you.
Michelle Smacks Down Letterman
It's just good.
Do you the feeling that maybe, just maybe, decent liberals are getting this too?
Palin on "The Today Show" this morning:
The reason it has written on the video that Palin "distorts" letterman's joke because this was taken from the sick leftist's site FireDogLake.
Like that site, the liberals that AREN'T decent don't get it:
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Is there nothing about Obama to joke about?
One wonders why the late night comics are STILL joking about Palin. Has there ever been, in the history of comedy, at time where the comics were still joking about the Vice Presidential nominee that wasn't elected 7 months after the election? Of course not.
Now, any person can see that our current Vice President gives us enough material to do tons of late night material, but somehow they don't see Obama (or his daughters!) very funny. But as Drew at Ace's proves (with video!) Obama has given them lots of material as well, they just haven't used it.
Enjoy.
More on the left, the lies, and the media spin
From Andy at NRO:
Have you seen the latest from the Obamedia? Stories like this one from the Washington Post telling us that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was actually prescient in approving the widely condemned release of an agency intelligence assessment fretting about a potential outbreak of "right-wing extremism." And yes, this is the same Homeland Security Secretary who knows neither the immigration laws it is her responsibility to enforce nor how the 9/11 terrorists got into the homeland, and whose idea of "nuance" is to call "terrorism" a "man-caused disaster."
Why prescient? The Post quotes Alex Kingsbury of U.S. News and World Report:
"In the past two weeks, the country has seen the bombing of a Starbucks coffee shop in New York City, the arrest of four men for allegedly plotting to blow up synagogues and shoot down planes, the shooting of two soldiers at an Army recruitment center in Arkansas, the assassination of a doctor inside a Kansas church, and the shooting at the Holocaust Museum.... Although these are not all cases of right-wing extremism, each is an example of domestic terrorism."
What rot. The men plotting to blow up synagogues and planes, and the shooter of the two soldiers (one of whom was killed), were jihadists. Their activities were an extension of an international terrorist threat we have been confronting domestically for over 20 years (the World Trade Center bombers began training for terrorism in the New York area in 1988). They had nothing to do with "right-wing extremism."
Update: Andy at NRO gives the full story on the "rightwing extremism" notion. Read the whole thing, here is an excerpt:
Have you seen the latest from the Obamedia? Stories like this one from the Washington Post telling us that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was actually prescient in approving the widely condemned release of an agency intelligence assessment fretting about a potential outbreak of "right-wing extremism." And yes, this is the same Homeland Security Secretary who knows neither the immigration laws it is her responsibility to enforce nor how the 9/11 terrorists got into the homeland, and whose idea of "nuance" is to call "terrorism" a "man-caused disaster."
Why prescient? The Post quotes Alex Kingsbury of U.S. News and World Report:
"In the past two weeks, the country has seen the bombing of a Starbucks coffee shop in New York City, the arrest of four men for allegedly plotting to blow up synagogues and shoot down planes, the shooting of two soldiers at an Army recruitment center in Arkansas, the assassination of a doctor inside a Kansas church, and the shooting at the Holocaust Museum.... Although these are not all cases of right-wing extremism, each is an example of domestic terrorism."
What rot. The men plotting to blow up synagogues and planes, and the shooter of the two soldiers (one of whom was killed), were jihadists. Their activities were an extension of an international terrorist threat we have been confronting domestically for over 20 years (the World Trade Center bombers began training for terrorism in the New York area in 1988). They had nothing to do with "right-wing extremism."
Letterman apologizes
I'll just let Allah at HotAir take this one:
"A sneak preview of tonight’s monologue from EW. He wasn’t joking about her 14-year-old daughter being a prostitute, silly. He was joking about her 18-year-old daughter being a prostitute. Perfectly legal. Whew!
“We were, as we often do, making jokes about people in the news and we made some jokes about Sarah Palin and her daughter [Bristol]… and now they’re upset with me…” Letterman says on tonight’s show. “These are not jokes made about her 14-year-old daughter. I would never, never make jokes about raping or having sex of any description with a 14-year-old girl…. Am I guilty of poor taste? Yes. Did I suggest that it was okay for her 14-year-old daughter to be having promiscuous sex? No.” Saying he hopes he’s “cleared part of this up,” Letterman extended an invitation to Palin to come on the show as a guest.
Don’t you see? He’d never condone statutorily raping a girl who’s underage. All he meant to do was goof on the idea that Palin’s eldest daughter, a single mother with a baby, is a whore. Everything cool now? Let’s move on."
The thing is that this is not an isolated incident. This kind of vile crap comes from the left on a regular basis. And I'm not talking little anonymous trolls on the internet. I'm talking comedians, TV talk show hosts, actors, and movies, and leftwing politicians. I'm sick of it.
Just like the recent "Hate F**k" article in Playboy about conservative women, this kind of thing never gets attention until the right in the blogosphere scream so loudly about it that the MSM finally pay attention.
Many might bring up Rush as an example of the other side fo the coin. But it's not even the same coin. The difference is that Rush never says anything as vile as Letterman says. I've never heard him say anything vile at all. He just doesn't, no matter what the leftwing loons in the blogosphere say. Also, Rush's job is to talk politics. That is what he does. But with the left in Hollywood, that ISN'T their job. We tune in to be entertained, not insulted. When you tune into Rush, you know what you are getting.
There isn't a day that doesn't go by that I'm not more convinced of how right we on the right really are.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Behind The Spin, The Truth
The left never misses an opportunity to spin a tragedy into a political smear. They tried to do that with the Tiller murder, but every pro-life group condemned it so that kind of fizzled. Now they are saying that the shooting at the Holocaust Museum were done by a "rightwing extremist." The only problem is that the shooter hated "neo-cons", "Bush", and "McCain." Add to that that he was a part of the far left "truthers" regarding 9/11 conspiracy theories and that his writings show a hatred of big corporations that is the same as that of leftwing anti-globalization activists. you have something crazy, but not a "rightwing extremist."
But don't expect to hear that on the MSM or the leftwing blogs. It doesn't fit their narrative, so they will ignore it.
Hitting the nail on the head...
This new writer over at HotAir just wrote the most excellent summary of the hypocrisy of smears in this country that I have ever read:
Our culture praises tolerance as the supreme virtue, but intolerance has its uses, too. For example, decent people should not tolerate a tired, bitter old late-night comedian making jokes about raping the 14-year-old daughter of a politician on national TV. The equivalent joke about raping Barack Obama’s daughters would not be tolerated. To let something like this slide is to concede that Sarah Palin and her daughter are less worthy of respect - less human - than Obama and his daughters. People do not forfeit their humanity because they hold political views that elite liberal culture disapproves of. There are only two things decent Americans need to hear from David Letterman now: his heartfelt apology to Willow Palin and her parents, followed by his resignation. Any guest on Letterman’s show who wishes to be respected as a gentleman or a lady should make this demand to his face, until he finally gets the message.
I’m also intolerant of celebrities casually tossing off ugly religious bigotry during fluff interviews. Asked how she would deal with the villain of her Transformers movies, Megan Fox said, “I’d barter with him, and say instead of the entire planet, can you just take out all of the white trash, hillbilly, anti-gay, super bible-beating people in Middle America?” A comparable remark about the black or Hispanic “anti-gay, super bible-beating people in Middle America” would not have been tolerated. A similar insult directed at the even more anti-gay Koran-beating Muslims in the Middle East, who are known to actually murder gays on a fairly regular basis, would have ended her career. To tolerate this kind of idiocy against certain racial groups and religions, but not others, is to concede that certain racial groups and religions are inherently inferior and worthy of contempt.
Read the whole thing.
Not Good
Terror Names Linked To Doomed Flight AF 447
Two passengers with names linked to Islamic terrorism were on the Air France flight which crashed with the loss of 228 lives, it has emerged.
French secret servicemen established the connection while working through the list of those who boarded the doomed Airbus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on May 31.
Flight AF 447 crashed in the mid-Atlantic en route to Paris during a violent storm.
While it is certain there were computer malfunctions, terrorism has not been ruled out.
via Patrick Madrid
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
NRSC.org
Go check out NRSC's new website. My friend Vincent Harris did a fantastic job! It is very clean and user friendly. They have a twitter feed, texting service, in the news, and blogs.
It's about time we got up to speed in social networking and such for political sites. Let your voice be heard at NRSC! Become a member. It's free!
If you missed this, you shouldn't have....
I can't seem to embed it, but it's Jon Voight's speech at a Republican fundraiser yesterday. Awesome doesn't begin to describe it. Talk about speaking truth to power...
Enjoy.
Found another copy of the vid here:
Made Up Christian Protests by a Marketing Firm
From Apoloblogology:
It doesn't matter whether or not Christians are actually protesting the release of the EA video game "Dante's Inferno;" what matters is that EA thought that people would expect it to happen. When a negative reaction to the game didn't materialize organically, EA decided it was time to manufacture some dissent:
Video game giant Electronic Arts has admitted it funded a group of fake protesters who pretended to be Christians as a publicity stunt to spur interest in its upcoming action game very loosely based on Dante’s “Inferno.”
The game company hired a group of almost 20 people to stand outside the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on Wednesday, the Associated Press says. The phony protesters passed out amateurish material and held signs bearing slogans such as “Trade in Your PlayStation for a PrayStation,” “Hell is not a Game” and “EA = Electronic Anti-Christ.”
Holly Rockwood, an EA spokeswoman, said the charade was arranged by a viral marketing agency hired by the company.
A web page in the crude style of 1990s web design was also created in connection with the stunt. It depicted crosses crushing the word “sin” and placed images of the King James Bible among phony condemnations and thinly-veiled promotions of the game. “
A video game hero does not have the authority to save and damn... ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE. and he will not judge the sinners who play this game kindly,” the site said.
I tried to find the website and couldn't.I don't know whether I'm amused, or (pardon the pun) inflamed by this stunt. But I do know that I'm amused by this little gem that the writer of the above article decided to sneak into the copy:
Dante placed the fraudulent and the sowers of discord in the penultimate Eighth Circle.
All of this raises an interesting ethical question: does unfairly representing someone you believe to be a bigot make you a bigot too? Me thinks it does.
Monday, June 08, 2009
To the left, minorities only matter if they agree with the left
J.C. Watts does a great job here of pointing out the hypocrisy of the left on stories of people who came from nothing and became incredible people with incredible accomplishments. Everyone in the media and the Obama administration gush over Sotomayor background of being born in the Bronx to immigrants from Puerto Rico and was raised by a single mother after her father died when she was nine.
But not so fast. There are other equally amazing stories that you may have missed:
"... recall how Clarence Thomas was treated in his confirmation process. I guarantee you'll not find more humble beginnings than his birthplace in Pin Point, Ga.
Thomas made it to the Supreme Court by a 52-48 vote in 1991, after he was man enough to call the process just what it was in his case -- a "high-tech lynching."
Think of Miguel Estrada, the 2001 circuit judge nominee whose confirmation was filibustered by Democrats to where Estrada withdrew. He came from humble beginnings in Honduras and arrived in the United States as a teenager with limited knowledge of English.
Think of Janice Rogers Brown's nomination to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. She took her seat only after two years of procedural delays. And you can't find more humble beginnings than being the daughter of sharecroppers who attended segregated schools in Alabama.
Interestingly, all three of these nominees are ethnic minorities. Two black, one Hispanic.
The people who put these three nominees through their living hell somehow failed to slobber all over themselves concerning their paths from the valley to the mountaintops.
Have you ever wondered why? Let me enlighten you:
The reason these three minority candidates got no credit for their individual journeys is due to the fact they lined up the wrong way on the Second Amendment -- the right to keep and bear arms.
They lined up the wrong way on when life begins -- at the time of conception.
They lined up wrong on how to make policy. They believe our nation creates policy through legislation -- not through the courts, as Judge Sotomayor and President Obama seem to believe.
.......................................
But please spare us the hogwash that if a nominee has a great rags to riches story, he or she is entitled to a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land.
If it were about pulling one's self up by the bootstraps, Clarence Thomas would not have had to endure the most brutal confirmation fight in history, and Miguel Estrada would be sitting on the federal bench today.
The process today is about viciously imposing political correctness on the Second Amendment, the issue of life, and legislating from the bench, and viciously punishing anyone who does not comply.
Clarence Thomas, Janice Rogers Brown and Miguel Estrada all believe the responsibility of the jurist is to define the law of the land, not to create it.
In my opinion, it's OK if some disagree with Thomas, Brown and Estrada. That's fine. But we shouldn't confuse a great human interest story with the merits of confirmation to the bench. I just don't believe the fantasy that living a "rich life" qualifies one to be a Supreme Court justice.
Don't kid yourself, folks. It's only a facade. According to the oath that a judge is administered, one's empathy is not the standard.
Sunday, June 07, 2009
Guess where this came from?
There is much going on in Iraq that is admirable. Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis are beginning to work out their differences through negotiation, not violence. Freedom of speech abounds. A new economy is taking shape, in which entrepreneurs are creating jobs and a civil society. Elections are punishing thugs and theocrats who cannot deliver services and rewarding more-pragmatic forces. The appeal of radical Islam is waning.
Who would write such a thing? National Review? World Net Daily? Who?
Would you believe....Newsweek?
Of course the article couldn't go long without fawning over Obama and giving him some kind of future credit for the success of Iraq:
But Obama still has the power to shape a decent outcome in Iraq. In doing so, he could help change the political dynamic within the Arab world and present a new model of America's relations with a modern, Muslim, Arab country.
Gee, kind of exactly how Bush wanted it to be.
Somehow, I think that even if the fawning press gives unfairly some or much of the credit to Obama to how Iraq turns out in the next few years, our gracious ex-President will never utter a defense. Bush never sought anything for himself. It was always about us in America and what was right in Iraq.
Imagine if things do turn out so well that 20 or 30 yrs from now we have an American President shaking hands with an Iraqi President and both speaking heartfelt words before the world about the men and women of our U.S. forces who gave so much that Iraq might be free. The shrill political partisan voices of today will have long faded, and all that will be remembered is the sacrifice and the gratitude.
The Real Race-Baiters.
Looking through the criticisms of Sotomayor from the right you find many complaints, but her being Hispanic is not one of them, naturally.
That was not the case with another certain Hispanic (emphasis mine):
From Brian Garst at American Thinker:
The most shocking case, however, is that of Miguel Estrada. Estrada was nominated by President Bush for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, a position he was, by most accounts, more than qualified for. Estrada graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was also editor of the Harvard Law Review, a post that would later be highly touted on Obama’s thin Presidential resume. In addition to time spent in private practice, Estrada went on to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, and then joined the Department of Justice during the Clinton Administration as an Assistant to the Solicitor General.
In 2001, President Bush made the Estrada appointment to the Court of Appeals. The democratic response was apocalyptic, and Estrada was eventually forced to withdraw after 2 years of stonewalling and filibusters. Thanks to a slew of leaked memos between democratic Senators and liberal interest groups, we now know the despicable motives behind this opposition: Estrada was a Hispanic who might one day be appointed to the Supreme Court, and by a Republican, no less. One memo highlights that Estrada was “especially dangerous” in part because he “is Latino.” In the twisted world of identity politics, advancement of minority groups is only acceptable when it’s made through the appropriate political party, namely the democrats. Conservative minorities are not afforded the same benefits of identity politics as liberal minorities, because they are a threat to the condescending notion that minorities may only think and vote democratic.
Naturally, Estrada’s opposition had to come up with better reasons than blatant racism to publicly oppose a candidate even they admit in the memo was “clearly an intelligent lawyer.” In their “talking points” section, they justified opposition on the grounds that he “has serious temperament problems,” and is a “right-wing zealot.” This last line of attack is somewhat baffling given the repeated claims that he “has virtually no paper trail.” And far from being the asset touted with Sonia Sotomayor, Estrada’s “compelling life story” was dismissed as evidence of nothing more than “affirmative action.” It’s hard to imagine the uproar if a similar statement were to be made about Sotomayor today.
The left never ceases to amaze me. When they are looking for race-baiters, they need look no further than the closest mirror.
via Protein Wisdom
Forgot this...
I forgot to include this great pic from Washington D.C. with my baby girl and Fox News Anchor Brian Wilson. That is the actual Capitol in the window. Brian called it "the money shot." Pretty cool, right? She's a natural.