Seven Point Manifesto – Iranian Resistance

Here it is. What the people in the street want.  Wonder how many of these things the government in Tehran will cave on?

We know the longer the protests go on, the weaker the government gets in the eyes of the people and the world, so either this gets resolved in a bloody fashion soon, or we’re seeing the beginning of the end for the current framework of goverment in Iran with the current guys in power.

ABC News to turn over programming to Obama

Everyone reading this needs to go to the abcnews website and register your complaints. This is a blatant example of a media outlet crossing the line into an area that our Founders NEVER ever wanted.  Media is supposed to be unbiased, free, and unbeholden to government for anything.  This is outrageous, and regardless of anyone’s political stripes, this should bother you immensely.  Wars were fought in this country to preserve the freedom of the press and individual rights to get information in a free fashion.  This flies in the face of that.

So, Katia’s questions to ponder

1. Just how much “in the tank” is ABC now?  Can we ever trust anything they say again as being the truth or at least not heavily biased towards the Administration?
2. We already know that NBC is in bed with General Electric which has a huge position in renewable energy sources.  So, NBC and MSNBC bias a lot of their coverage to favor liberal positions.  When is the last time you saw any Republican on either channel that got a fair shake?
3. CBS News proved last year during the election campaign that they would do ANYTHING to destroy John McCain.  Katie Couric has been said to mention to people that she’s glad the conservatives have been absolutely marginalized.  And this is who is delivering the news?  Her ratings speak for themselves.

Where then does one go for news?  The declining ratings of the big 3 newscasts seem to indicate that people are abandoning them in droves for other sources.  Small surprise, right?

Drudge has the link up about this…  Watch this.  It will be interesting to see the reaction.

Mullahs agree to re-count votes??

This is somewhat surprising, but I caution my readers that this is most likely an attempt to grab a fig leaf to add some legitimacy to the elections.  So, ask yourself:

1. Who sets the rules by which the votes are re-counted?
2. If the votes truly show that Ahmadenijad lost, would he concede and allow Mousavi to be installed as President?
3. How scared is the Iranian government, given the spectacle of people demonstrating in the streets, along with the Iranian military taking a neutral position, AND our State Department saying in essence that the students might, possibly, have a small leg to stand on.

Here’s the Hot Air article.

Katia’s News… Three Articles to Read

Top of the morning to everyone.

By now, everyone knows about the goings on in Iran.  The Iranian government is backed into the proverbial corner. In short, the protests in the streets have forced them to reckon with a population that knows the franchise was stolen from them.

I would keep an eye on The Drudge Report, Hot Air, Real Clear Politics, and your mainstream news paper of choice to stay apprised of things.  Also, plug into the #iranelection channel over on Twitter.

But, here are three links you should visit to get some perspectives on what’s going on outside of the Iran story

1. The Congressional Budget Office released figures yesterday that show that the Kennedy bill for Obamacare would add $1 Trillion in costs over the next 10 years.  Yes, that’s TRILLION…  And, it doesn’t even insure all the people that the liberals want to cover.  Click here to read the article at Politico.
2. Benjamin Netanyahu answered Obama’s Cairo speech with a speech of his own.  It is worth analyzing this, because in the long term, the next move in the chess game on Iran might well come from Israel.  Notable is that Netanyahu has endorsed the two state solution, but he has conditions on such a framework that might not have appeared before. Click here to read the article at Human Events.
3. For all the talk about Hope and Change and the “middle of the road” in American politics, it appears as though polarization of the electorate is still the modus operandi.  Here’s the article over at Hot Air referencing a Gallup poll of voter preferences.

Enjoy your day here in the US, and for our readers elsewhere in the world, thanks for dropping by and I hope you had a good day or are having a good day.  Remember, you can get the backstory on important issues here.  I will always seek to find what the mainstream media isn’t telling you!

Washington Post article on Iran misses the point… again…

Click here to read the Washington Post article. Sadly, the writer misses some key points.

1. Managed democracy, as she defines it is a misnomer.  Democracy, by its very definition implies that voters have a franchise. That means that votes are cast, counted and the candidate of the voter’s choosing gets elected.
2. Hamas getting elected in the Palestinian elections is more of what a democracy might be, but again, this misses the point. Hamas was elected in a democratic manner insofar as votes were cast and counted.  But, it can hardly be considered a free election when candidates are chosen by the government to run on the ballot.
3. True democracy, then implies two things that have to be present at the same time… First, candidates should be able to go through some sort of nominating process or process sanctioned by the public where the public hears the views of a wide range of candidates on the issues of the day.  This implies a free press, and no squelching of opposition figures via arresting them, or killing them, in some cases.  Second, the elections themselves should be carried out in an open, free manner where the legitimacy of the results cannot be questioned on a wide scale.  Even here in the US, we have an imperfect system, but we won’t usually have millions of people protesting in the street the day after elections saying the outcome was not legitimate.
4. I doubt anyone could argue that either condition was met in Iran.  This whole idea of a “managed” democracy is simply a device by which the writer offers a fig leaf to other countries which do not care to honor the fundamental precepts of a representative democracy. Not to belabor the above, but if there is no debate about the candidates, and no opposition that can offer ideas, and no free elections, then you cannot use the word democracy.  Managed or not..

So, if this story is really not written from the right perspective, where to go then?

Try this… Instead of wringing your hands, trying to figure out whether it is a managed democracy, or something else, why not figure out what you are going to do about it now??

The editors over at National Review Online have it about right.  Check out their thoughts here. There were plenty of ways that one could point out that this was not a legitimate exercise in democracy, but really, the end game here is laid out by the writers quite starkly…

The supreme leader and his president have little choice except to pretend to strength. President Obama should call them on it, lending the opposition his rhetorical support. So far, he has given the impression that he wants the dictatorship to stabilize itself so he can get back to the work of appeasing it. The more Obama extends that hand of his, the likelier the regime is to try to crush its bones.

So, we watch and wait.  Given the weakness of Obama’s speech in Cairo, and the fact that the fix was in for Iranian elections from the beginning, the Iranian government is seeking legitimization that they never can have. They wanted a position of strength to bargain with Obama, and they’ve made themselves weaker.  But, the nuclear weapons work still continues.  Notice that part of the story has kind of fallen off the front pages??

Update: Just saw this one over at Hot Air.  Liebermann has come out and said he’s with the protesters in the streets. It’s about time someone did.

Iran’s gambit… Failed…

Here’s a great article over at the Guardian.

The basic premise, which is worth noting is that the election was a sham, and so no amount of legitimacy can be conferred upon Ahmadenijad. He and the mullahs may want to claim they’re a legitimate government, but the rest of the world knows different.

While you’re here, you might also want to check out Hot Air’s afternoon update on the protests in Iran. Somehow, I think when 2-3 million people take to the streets, the calculus of the equation changes. Now the government can’t brutally oppress people because they know the world is focused on what is happening in Tehran.

Events in Iran – Calling Wile E Coyote?

This one almost had me laughing, but I suppose the chain of events was quite predictable.

1. Offer peace to Muslim world, including its most thuggish dictators
2. Make it seem as though no one would pursue vigorous military action.  Just check out how the administration re-titled the War on Terror to “Overseas Contingency Operation”.  Also how military and CIA officers are retiring en masse.
3. Say nothing about the good things going on in Iraq as the country begins to put itself together

Is it any wonder to anyone that Iran is behaving as it is now?

Click here to read the Hot Air article.

Thought pieces on Iran for your reading

Pajamas Media has great stuff to read to get behind what the media is telling you. I give you two of their writer’s articles on Iran issues.

Click here to read Jennifer Rubin’s Article on whether Iranians deserve a change

Click here to read Victor Davis Hanson, who is always a favorite of mine. Today, he muses about how we got to this point and what we might do now with Iran.

Iran orders vote counting investigation

This article over at Hot Air has the details.

Shouldn’t be a surprise that the government had to do something, given the mass protesting in the streets in Iran. But, this definitely does smack of desperation.

Several questions and things to watch…

1. Does Ahmadinijad ask for something from the West in exchange for making nice with the students and demonstrators
2. Do the mullahs come out with a statement themselves, or remain largely silent
3. How does the government treat Mousavi (Ahmadinijad’s challenger)
4. How does the government take into account the people’s anger over the massive disenfranchisement.  I’d actually say the people were given zero franchise, but that’s just me.

The Iranian people are extremely proud and have a great history of producing scholars, doctors, lawyers and others in times long since past.  The mullahs who are running the place now seem hell-bent on continuing to destroy the future of the country and also ensure the youth have no future to look forward to.

Course, if Israel has to attack them soon, things will get much more difficult.  I submit the text of Netanyahu’s speech to counter Obama’s Cairo speech of a few weeks ago.  Click here to read it. He doesn’t say a whole lot on the Iran issue, but the whole speech does give you the impression that he gets “it” in understanding that Israel doesn’t have many friends in the world right now.

I put this in here because I think any thought of what is going on in Iran has to take account of Israel.  Surely, one can assume the Iranian students know if the govermnet in Tehran doesn’t moderate its views and stop producing nuclear fuel, there is a collision course set here.  At times like this, it is like the game of chicken that teenagers of 1950 and earlier used to play.  Who is going to blink first??

North Korea warns about nuclear testing

This article shows us that the guys in Pyongyang do have some issues when the world turns its attention away from them.

So, now we have another sociopathic dictator who wants to feel important. Only, the backstory which the mainstream media seems to be missing is that China holds most of our US government debt. If we don’t figure out financially how to put our house in order so they continue lending us money, we might not be able to get money from them to finance US government borrowing.

Where it gets dicey, is if China is going to apply pressure to North Korea for us, they might exact some concessions from us in our financing, interest rates, or something else.

On the other hand, we could tell Japan to go and arm itself (in the nuclear sense) and that might give China enough incentive to change their thinking on North Korea. But, time will tell how this one shakes out.