Also2

Iran is still blazing, not that you'd know it from the MSM.

Also

The President has injected himself into individual policing decisions (for an exceedingly fair look at this, see Bill Cosby).

Ugh

Obama has officially shoved himself in where nobody wanted him: individual medical decisions.
At one meeting, he told a woman that her mother (who had received a pacemaker at 99 years old), would perhaps be told that she was better off taking a painkiller than having a pacemaker under his health care plan. The American Academy of Otolaryntology has objected to Obama 's characterization of its doctors:

President Obama said, “Part of what we want to do is to make sure that those decisions are being made by doctors and medical experts based on evidence, based on what works…. Right now, doctors a lot of times are forced to make decisions based on the fee payment schedule that's out there. … the doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, 'You know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid's tonsils out … I'd rather have that doctor making those decisions based on whether you really need your kid's tonsils out, or whether … something else would make a difference…."

Please. No doctor is "forced" to make a decision like that. Any doctor that makes a decision based on the process you just described should be sued for malpractice. Obama thinks his legislation will change good doctors into "hope and change!" doctors. And that's what they will be-- doctors who offer the hope that their patients' conditions will change, because the care that they'll be able to give will be rationed. By government bureaucrats. Who know nothing about medicine, as the President exemplifies. Lovely.

Also notice the continuation of the "greedy evil" meme. Doctors? Greedy evil people who perform unnecessary procedures to make an extra buck off their patients' suffering. Private sector employees? Evil greedy people who could be "making a difference" if they were doing community organizing or some such thing, but chose instead to go for the money (side note: have you noticed that the democrats' student loan forgiveness program will forgive your student loans after 10 years, but ONLY if you become a public employee?). Investors and their lawyers who put money into American companies and then insisted that their contracts and the law be honored? Greedy evil (although the unions who insisted on contract abrogation to give themselves a larger slice of the pie than the law gave them are honored, noble folk). Tax-evading cabinet members? Gre... oh, wait!

It must needs be

that you watch this:


and read this and this.

In other news...

Mark Sanford is the scum of the earth. "Yes, I'm going to try to save my marriage. Yes, I made a mistake. With a few women. Did I mention that the Argentine woman is my soul mate?"

Jerk. His poor wife, heaven bless her for standing up to him. He needs to hie him hence. Perhaps to Argentina (on his own dime this time). He can spend the rest of political oblivion there, and stop disgusting the rest of us.

Narratives

Sane people hate to sound like conspiracy theorists.

Really, we do.

Nevertheless... Check out CNN's homepage. Heck, see if you can find screen shots for the past couple days. Iran, front and center? Honduras, maybe? Uh, no. Michael Jackson (not one, nor twice, but thrice above the fold today). Also, "Disco tune saves man's life", "Biden visits Iraq for Fourth of July weekend", "Kids with autism graduate, achieve dreams"... oh wait. There is one on Iran, buried in the 21 articles under "Latest News". "Latest News", by the way, includes all the articles listed above (except the MJ ones. One of those is "Latest", one is "Breaking", and one is "Most Popular". Sounds kinda like your high school yearbook, doesn't it). In fact, the autism article is apparently not only breaking, but more important than the Iran article-- it's the first listed. The Iranian headline reads "Attacks, arrests slowing online news from Iran". It could just as easily read, "Utter lack of attention from American media dampens revolutionaries".

And as far as Honduras goes, not a single article above the fold on my 24-inch monitor. Meanwhile, Obama throws his support behind the leftist power-grabbing law-breaking thug that was the president of Honduras, while a gazillion people protest in favor of the new president. Apparently it's okay to meddle in this one. And to throw our support behind Hugo Chavez, the Castro brothers, and Daniel Ortega. Lovely. Doesn't that look like the lefty hall of fame? Obama, Chavez, Castro, and Ortega. Maybe we could call them COCO for short? OCCO? Such nice abbreviatory possibilities.

The U.S. foreign policy is an abomination. And the media is growing more complicit every day (that's the conspiracy theory part). Every White House tries to control the narrative, but they've never had a press corp so bent on helping them (maybe their tingly legs have something to do with it). Even Helen Thomas called the administration/media collusion out. I'm not a fan of Thomas', but dang, this is impressive (h/t Instapundit):

Gibbs: “Which question did you object to at the town hall meeting, Helen?”

Thomas: “It's a pattern. It isn't the question—”

Gibbs: “What's a pattern?”

Thomas: “It's a pattern of controlling the press.”

Gibbs: “How so? Is there any evidence currently going on that I'm controlling the press--poorly, I might add.”

Thomas: “Your formal engagements are pre-packaged.”

Gibbs: “How so?”

Reid: “Well, and controlling the public—”

Thomas: “How so? By calling reporters the night before to tell them they're going to be called on. That is shocking.”

Gibbs: “We had this discussion ad nauseam and—”

Thomas: “Of course you would, because you don't have any answers.”

Go read the whole transcript. It's fatalistic schadenfreude-- schadenfreude because FINALLY someone is "speaking truth to power". Fatalistic because you know it will make no difference at all.

No!

Iran massacred the protesters today.

http://threatswatch.org/rapidrecon/2009/06/unimaginable-horror-in-tehran/

Don't scroll all the way down without knowing that the last picture is horrific.

?!?!

Who on earth (except the mullahs) thinks that THIS is still a good idea?? Or that it ever was?!

From a State Department briefing yesterday:

QUESTION: This isn’t a frivolous question, really. Do you think it’s still appropriate to have Iranians come to these July 4th parties under the circumstances? I mean, is there any thought being given to like, rescinding invitations?

MR. KELLY: No, there’s no thought to rescinding the invitations to Iranian diplomats.

QUESTION: It’s appropriate to have a social dialogue with them if they come?

MR. KELLY: Well, we have made a strategic decision to engage on a number of fronts with Iran, and we tried many years of isolation and we’re pursuing a different path now.

QUESTION: Have they said yes?

QUESTION: The President keeps saying that —

MR. KELLY: I don’t know, Arshad.

Absolutely disgusting. We're having Iranian officials for a barbecue on INDEPENDENCE DAY, while they're murdering their own people who are asking for... independence. This administration is pathetic. Let's list, shall we?

This is the State Department that:
Told China that its brutality towards its own people was of less concern that global warming.

Gave Russia a "reset" button (mistranslated, by the way) for relations-- as at least three administration-critical journalists' murders were being investigated.

Pledged millions of dollars in aid to Palestinians (and indirectly to Hamas) and regularly shafts Israel.

Turned their backs on Eastern Europe, leaving them at the mercy of a newly-imperial Russia/USSR.

There are other things. I just don't feel like throwing up this early in the morning.

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

What do you think?

This is another video from JibJab-- their political videos are fantastic, but I can't quite decide if I like this one or not-- although the part with the rainbows and bunnies in Iraq is pretty darn good. What do you guys think?

UPDATE: I couldn't get the video to embed in this post, so it's in the next one up

And by the way

If you're wondering about the time stamps on recent posts, they're set to Tehran time (GMT +3:30). Make a million extra virtual Iranians and you make it that much harder for the regime to find the ones who really matter.

Oh no

"Official" reports are saying 19 are dead in Tehran after today's protests. The protesters are saying that it's more like 150. You'd have to be crazy or grossly uninformed to believe anything with the word "official" on it coming out of Iran.

Ahmadinejad, Khameini, and the whole crew: COWARDS. Despicable cowards.

God bless the men and women who stood against them. God bless the families of the dead.

***

People are now saying that this "discredits" the Iranian government. Yet according to CNN, Iranian officials are still invited to the G8 meeting. All Obama has brought himself to say is a brief statement that includes the sentence, "Iran must understand that the world is watching."

As we used to say in elementary school, "No duh". Obama must understand that while he cares that the whole world is watching, Ahmadinejad and Khameini don't, nor have they for years. Come to think of it, China didn't seem to care that the world was watching when they sent tanks against unarmed students. I wonder if anyone said that Chinese communism was "discredited". If they did, it didn't seem to take.

It makes you wonder if we're cowards too. Sure, a different, much more benign variety. But still-- cowards. We deal with governments like China for money. We give reset buttons to Russia. Our president still hasn't amended his "no preconditions" statement on Iran. Two American journalists have been sentenced to a decade of hard labor in North Korea, which, by the way, has tested two nuclear bombs and has a missile aimed at Hawaii set to launch on Independence Day. And all we can do is wag our collective finger.

May it be that the "election" in Iran was as the falling of small stones on a mountainside that start an avalanche. May the Iranians wake up and realize that they are strong.* As are the Chinese, and the North Koreans, and the Burmese, and the Cubans, and the Venzuelans, and the Belarusians, and the Vietnamese... may all those who live without freedom in this world.

*With all due respect to Tolkien

Wow

Read this article from the London Times. Fantastic. For years we've been hearing how we can't "impose" democracy on people.

Turns out it wouldn't be an imposition.

Look at the hundreds of thousands of people pouring into the streets in Iran. It's one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking things I've seen since I started following politics. All these people want is the freedom to choose their own leaders. Keeping that from them is an "imposition". If, by imposition, you mean an abominable atrocity.

H/T Gay Patriot

Go green!

Not Greenpeace green.

This Green:
This photo seems to me to be a perfect summing up of what I hope turns out to be a revolution: a woman in black and green-- armed with a cell phone.

Michael Totten over at Contentions has been consta-blogging the Iranian protests. Head on over for the news.

Eowyn is back!

Well then. My son has arrived, and I'm getting significantly less sleep, but I no longer feel like a demotivated beached whale, and regular blogging will re-(re-re-re-)commence.

First up today: This, from Instapundit. Apparently Ed Whelan over at The Corner took it upon himself to "out" an anonymous liberal blogger who had been annoying him. And, as much as I've enjoyed Whelan's posts and respected his opinion, I've gotta say that that's pretty low. Yes, lots of trolls are anonymous. Anonymity is one of the great banes of the internet. Whelan should try being a woman who plays Team Fortress 2-- idiots who use their anonymity to ask for nudes, descriptions of my anatomy, etc. are far more annoying than a snarky liberal.

But anonymity is also one of the great gifts of the internet. There's a reason I don't use my name-- namely that I have a family. Should a miracle occur and I write something that gains attention, I don't want my kids brought into it in any way, be it miniature trolls in school or fatwas from some offended jihadi. Anyway, the point is that people often have a good reason for their anonymity, and one had better have a darn good reason for blowing someone else's cover. Whelan didn't have a good reason.

Moving on: Presumably everyone has seen this graph by now (via Gateway Pundit):


Is anybody taking bets on someone in the MSM taking one for the team and admitting that the stimulus bill has failed?

Yeah, me neither. We've exceeded the administration's unemployment numbers they were projecting without the stimulus. In fact, according to Obama's projections, unemployment wasn't supposed to peak (at levels below today's) until 2010. We've shot past his predictions-- a year early.

Fun.